


Say Hallelujah, Say Goodnight

by alivingfire



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient History, Angels, Blood and Injury, Demons, Explicit Sexual Content, Found Family, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Happy Ending, Historical Fantasy, Historical References, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Non-Linear Narrative, OT5 Friendship, Pre-Apocalypse, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rimming, Supernatural Elements, i know the tags don't make it seem that way but, though obviously the point is to... stop the apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 20:23:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 110,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10749141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alivingfire/pseuds/alivingfire
Summary: Louis is an angel who is just a little too bad to be good, Harry is a demon who is just a little too good to be bad, and they're both a little too in love to be impartial when angels and demons go to war.Louis has been alive since life was a mere concept; he watched the summoning of Man into existence, he was there when Eve took the apple. He’s seen seas break the world into separate pieces, he’s watched empires crumble into dust. He’s seen wildfire consume cities, he’s seen the world painted white with snow. He has known the most beautiful humans to walk the planet, he has watched the most powerful mortals gather their riches and influence around them and then die just like the poorest, weakest humans do. He’s met humans whose motives defy explanation, people who use their lives as battering rams, as tools, as weapons, as chess pieces.None of that stopped Louis in his tracks.But Harry did.





	1. THE BEGINNING

**Author's Note:**

> whew. so. here we go. 
> 
> the following is a(n incomplete) list of all the things i am not an expert in: greek, irish gaelic, urdu, dari, religious history, military history, mythology and folklore, angelology, ancient greece, ancient rome, ancient ireland, any history at all besides, like, the american revolution, which isn't mentioned. 
> 
> so, because i am not an expert in any of those things but they are all mentioned in this story, i did lots and lots of research. it's absolutely possible i (or the internet) got things wrong -- if i did, please assume i didn't mean to, and that nothing incorrect is meant to be insulting in any way, and please feel free to point out where i went wrong. 
> 
> while on the subject of research, i did a thing and made what is basically a read-along guide of footnotes/extras that will help explain some of the historical or religious references made in this story. you can read the entire thing [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit?usp=sharing), or i put links to each section in the relevant parts of the fic. i absolutely tried to write the story so that you don't _have_ to understand the references to get what's going on, but i also wanted to provide that as an option for people who were interested. translations of any other languages will also be linked, unless i explain within the story what the words mean. 
> 
> **SMALL BUT IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT A THING THAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN IN THIS STORY:** there is major character death in the first chapter **BUT** the entire point of this story is that it's an angel/demon au, so we gotta make a demon somehow, which means someone's gotta die for a bit. but i cross my heart, he's not dead for long. 
> 
> the lovely [nia](http://the-only-believer.tumblr.com/) made a playlist for this story, you can find it here: [PLAYLIST](https://open.spotify.com/user/shabbyclothes/playlist/1mfcwFPZDO1phS9DxxLWjW)
> 
> more notes at the very end of the last chapter but for now thank you so much for giving this weird little story a chance, and i hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> **EDIT 1/8/18:** by some ridiculous turns of events, this fic is now available to purchase as a [printed novel](http://www.lulu.com/shop/alivingfire/say-hallelujah-say-goodnight/paperback/product-23474262.html), complete with bonus scenes and fanart. i'm honestly speechless that i've been able to hold something i wrote in my hand, and it's all thanks to everyone who ever read this weird little love story. thank you thank you thank you. 
> 
>  
> 
> **warnings for this chapter:** descriptions of war, descriptions of major illness, small mentions of injury, character death (but remember it's gonna be okay!!! promise!!), mentions of what could be classified as depression

PART ONE — THE BEGINNING

  _every lover in the form of stars, the road_  
_blocked. All night I stretched my arms across_  
_him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing  
with all my skin and bone Please keep him safe._

 

 

Humankind has always had the notion that it is neutral. A pervasive school of thought has endured for thousands of years and through the rise and fall of dozens of trendy religions that says people have the choice, even the _responsibility_ , to be good or bad. Righteous or evil. Heaven or Hell.

People are wrong. And people have _been_ wrong for thousands of years.

No person is born a clean slate. They are free of sin, sure, free of vices and humours and evils, but so were demons, once. No, people are born with souls already predisposed to one of two things: golden souls belong to the Light, silver souls belong to the Dark. They can fight their natures all they want, but good people will be good in the end, and bad people will be bad. That is humanity’s one truth.

But, then again.

There are sometimes situations where things are, figuratively, a little less black and white. Or, literally, a little less silver and gold. Things are murky. Unclear. People can be swayed; people can be won over.

Those souls, those contested ones, those are Louis’ responsibility.

But it’s not simple, not as easy as snapping his fingers, batting his eyelashes, and coercing a human to behave, to be righteous, to be _good_.

No, for every drop of good in the bucket, there’s a drop of bad to match. Nature needs balance. For every golden soul born into the world, there’s a silver one born too. For every guardian angel protecting the innocent, the virtuous, the pure _,_ there’s a crossroads demon making deals with the corrupt.

For every soldier of the Light, there’s a warrior for the Dark.

So to balance Louis, there’s a Harry.

And they’ve been dancing for millennia.

 

* * *

 

But, of course, it wasn’t always that way.

 

* * *

 

_[Elis](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.roll3wud3yl9), Greece_ _| AD 41_

There’s a boy sitting just over there with hemlock woven in his hair, and for a moment, just a brief moment, Louis wonders if he’s an angel.

But, no. He shouldn’t be; couldn’t be, in fact. Louis, by right of his given place in the cosmos and all, knows every single angel born or made. He’s a Dominion, after all, and that’s what they do — angels are their purview. Every other immortal being spends their time wrapped up in themselves or their offerings or the humans that outnumber them like ants around a spider; they make sure the humans don’t get wild ideas in their heads to do something ridiculous that’ll blow up the planet; they stand at the Gates and judge the humans who want to enter, or they lounge in comfort behind the Gates and laugh at the mortals who are turned away.

But not Louis. Not the other Dominions. Their job is to watch the angels and the other immortals, the minors and majors and those that call themselves gods now and those who are trying to pass as humans. Every angel is Louis’ to guide, to watch, which means he _knows_ every single one of them, their names and ranks and fears and triumphs.

And Louis might have spent the last year caught up in the Caligula drama in the Roman courts, but he never forgets any of his angels. Those are his brothers, his sisters, his _family;_ new angels aren’t created so often that he wouldn’t recognize one in front of him.  

And yet, there’s a boy sitting on a steep set of stark stone stairs, and he wears hemlock in his hair, and he looks like a face that Louis should recognize.  

A breeze ruffles the chiton around the boy’s knees, the cloth white as untouched snow, his feet wrapped in rough sandals and crossed delicately at the ankle. The hemlock sits like a crown on his head, little white blossoms of poison braided through dark, curled hair. He’s watching the crowd around him as though it’s more interesting to study them than to interact with them; his every expression is so clear it’s like plucking a thought directly out of his head. He doesn’t like that man in the bright, flashy blue standing at the [Phillipeon](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.24zlbkpc21el) and staring at the statue of Alexander as though he too will one day have the epithet “the Great” attached to his name; he thinks that the priest’s apprentice currently scrubbing the grime off the frieze that runs along the front of the temple doesn’t deserve his honored position and that he himself could do a much better job; he thinks that the girls giggling nearby and peering at him from behind the palaestra are silly and superficial.

The boy scans the crowd; Louis can’t see his eyes, wonders at their color, wonders at their depth. Louis wonders if he lives near here, if the Grecians are so used to him that none of them stop and do a double-take anymore; Louis, in direct contrast, can’t pull his gaze away.  

The boy keeps scanning, keeps scanning, and then his eyes catch on Louis and it’s like Louis has been pinned. They watch each other, angel and boy, as though sizing each other up.

The boy gets to his feet. Louis has a moment — ten seconds, perhaps — to decide. Does he run? Does he stay? Louis isn’t supposed to interact with the humans, technically, they aren’t his worry.

Well, they _weren’t_ his worry, but then Louis watches the boy trip and nearly get run over by a chariot, and he starts to think that maybe he’s a little worried about this one after all.

“ _[Τί πράττεις](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.2mq907b4i8q)_ ,” the boy greets when he’s finally (safely) crossed the road. He’s pink-cheeked from the near-miss with the chariot, but otherwise fine. “I’m Herakleitos.”

_Glory of Hera._ Well, it’s a fitting name, as the boy could pass for Hera herself with his wild, unrestrained curls and pale, soft skin, the feminine bow of his lips and the faint flush of his cheeks.

Louis smiles and digs in his head for the proper return greeting — sometimes it takes a while, all those languages rattling against each other up there, some of them not even invented yet — but the boy continues before he can say a word.

“You were watching me,” he says.

“You’re very beautiful,” Louis replies honestly.

“Oh.” It seems to stop the boy — [Herakleitos](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.nzcoxtbprqwo) — in his tracks. Then he smiles, and in that moment Louis loses his ability to catch the breath he doesn’t need, his throat going dry like an old well. “That’s alright, then.”

He lives just in the Pisatis district, north of the river, or so he tells Louis, but his mother is in a malaise and his sister is off with her friends, so he’s come to see Hera in her temple. Maybe an offering will soothe his mother’s headache and his sister’s irritability, he says, and shows Louis the lump of honey candy he’d smuggled out from under his mother’s nose.  

“Hera likes sweets best,” the boy whispers, as though Hera’s statue, her marble ears, could hear. Maybe he thinks that’s true — it’s not, as Hera is miles away on top of her mountain engrossed in her own affairs, but something about the gesture strikes Louis as endearing.  

“I saw Hera, not too long ago,” Louis says. “Nice lady.”

And then he remembers that Hera, to this boy, is an untouchable goddess. Not someone who can just be popped in to check on from time to time, not someone name-dropped casually into conversation. Not just another immortal in the legions that exist, who Louis has met countless times in the millennia before this boy’s branch of the family tree even blossomed.

Louis pretends to inspect the nearest temple’s cornices so as not to watch the dawning realization cross Herakleitos’ face. He can _feel_ the boy’s brow wrinkling in confusion, can already hear the polite excuse so he can get away from the madman saying he’s chatted with the gods.  

And _this_ is why Louis doesn’t often actually talk to the humans, no matter how much he might want to.

Herakleitos, though, doesn’t mock or run or back away, muttering prayers for safety. Instead, he laughs, bright and loud like the horns on the warships out at sea, and the noise startles a pair of geese who had been minding their own business in a small fountain nearby.

“You’re very strange,” he says with a grin.

“You have no idea,” Louis tells him truthfully.

Herakleitos gestures widely behind himself, his eyes still caught on Louis’ face. “Sit with me?”

The Greeks were the ones who gave meaning to the olive branch in the first place, and this certainly feels like one being extended right now. Louis shouldn’t, he knows; Hera herself — who really _is_ a perfectly nice lady but also quite a jealous old thing — would roll right off her throne if she knew one of her worshippers brought an angel to her temple. If she was in a _really_ bad mood, something like this might even start a war, and Louis would never hear the end of it from the boys Upstairs.

But then Herakleitos says, “Please?” and, for some reason, that works. Louis inclines his head and Herakleitos grins once more, wide and dimpled, his eyes alight. He gestures again and Louis falls in step, the two of them weaving across the busy road and through the crowds flowing to the marketplace outside of the gates.

They’re outside the edge of the Olympian sanctuary, a sacred spot of land where all the temples and memorials and important villas are grouped conveniently together on top of a hill. The sanctuary is blocked in by thick walls, outside of which cats lay supine on sun-warmed limestone and children chase each other as their parents gossip and bargain. Louis lets himself fall a half-step behind Herakleitos, up the steep stairs he’d been sitting on earlier, through the Propylon, the great gate winged by tall, thick columns, and into the sanctuary proper. Hera’s temple is the first building inside the gate, modest compared to the temple of her husband but no less powerful in Louis’ eyes, pulsing with the ancient sigils and seals meant to keep immortals such as himself away but that are invisible to the eyes of the humans who come and go.

The _peripteros,_ the boundary line around the temple made by bleached stone columns, is Hera’s last line of defence to keep out anyone unwelcome. But Louis is more powerful than she or her devotees will ever be, and he passes between two of the columns and into her courtyard with no more than a light shudder.  

“You didn’t give me your name,” Herakleitos says as they take a seat at a bench near another fountain. The stone isn’t really comfortable, but it is warm from the midday sun.  

“I’m Louis,” he answers. It’s a truthful answer as much as it is an outright lie; Louis _will_ be Louis one day, or maybe that day starts today, but he also is and forever will be known as [Leilel](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.mhd36wo2zhci) among the immortal classes. Still, he prefers Louis. Less ancient and clunky.

“Louis,” Herakleitos repeats slowly, the syllables foreign in his mouth. “I’ve not heard that before, what does it mean?”

“Famous battle. It’s French,” Louis answers unthinkingly. And then he realizes. “Or that’s what it will mean. Someday.” That’s not making it any better. “When French is invented.” And that’s the worst thing he could say at all.

Still, though, Herakleitos smiles delightedly, like Louis is his favorite new form of entertainment.

“So strange,” he repeats to himself, shaking his head a little. Then, “ _Louis_. I like it.”

Louis finds himself biting back his own smile. “I’m glad.”

“Where do you come from?” Herakleitos asks, head tilted. “Not Greece.”

“No, not Greece,” Louis agrees. He considers saying, _I’m from Heaven, actually, and if you look hard enough you’ll see my wings_ just to see Herakleitos smile his bemused smile again, but he decides to play it safe. “I was in Rome, and when the new emperor took over I was able to leave, so I came here.” He doesn’t mention that he _had_ to leave _because_ the new emperor took over, his job finished and history continuing as it was meant to do, but that’s also probably for the best.

“You’re not Roman,” Herakleitos disputes. “I have friends who are Roman, you are not anything like them.”

Louis isn’t anything like anyone but, again, that’s not exactly something he can say. He dithers for a moment, watching a hawk dip overhead. It’s quiet here, among the silent stone and trickling fountains, the statues not able to give away any of Louis’ secrets. Worshippers and priests are respectful in their quiet discussions, heads together as they confer about the needs of their gods or their own small, tiny lives, the chattering crowds of Elis outside the sanctuary made quiet by the thick gate and walls.

“That’s not what Zeus looks like,” Louis says instead. He nods towards the god’s temple, larger and more ornate than his wife’s. The statue of Zeus visible in the space between columns is, frankly, ridiculous, sitting tall and judgmental over everyone else, his chest like barrels tied together, his legs mighty and muscular, his hair like coiled ringlets. Louis suddenly wishes he had a reason to visit Olympus, if only to poke fun at Zeus’ wish fulfillment in the form of ivory and gold, and to ask if he personally visited the artist himself to make sure the statue came out exactly as he wanted.

“Oh?” Herakleitos chuckles. “Did you meet him when you met Hera?”

Louis was there when Zeus plucked his first lightning bolt from the sky, actually, the same way he was there when [Quetzacoatl](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.57ctinlkkxw6) was given his wings and when Amaterasu and her siblings painted the landscape of the island they’d claimed for themselves. He was there when the earth Became, and he will be there when the earth dies.

But, also, yes; he did see Zeus the last time he met with Hera to discuss their family’s ridiculous squabbles and revenges, so he gives the easy (well, easier) answer.

“Yes,” he says. “And he’s much shorter than you’d think.”

“That says quite a lot, coming from you,” Herakleitos says mildly, and Louis turns to him, a shocked hand pressed to his chest.

“I am _perfectly_ normal sized,” Louis disputes. “I checked to make sure before I came here.”

“Of course,” Harry says, then laughs again. The sound rings against the stones and trees, pure joy conjured up by Louis that lights him up inside like manna, like an offering in his name; he’s greedy with the sound, hoarding it, knowing without a doubt it’s a greater gift than Hera could ever deserve.  

From outside their little bubble inside the column boundary, there comes a low whistle. A girl stands nearby, her long hair tied up and bound by a  _[kekryphalos](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.beiwvkrjee2q)_  of gold netting, the thread shining in the sun, her chiton dyed the distinctive pink of madder root. “Herakleitos,” she calls. “Mother is calling for you.”

“I have to go,” Herakleitos apologizes, getting to his feet. His sister flicks a curious glance at Louis, but doesn’t say a word as he hesitates, as though he doesn’t quite want to leave. Louis understands completely.

Still, meandering, somewhat meaningless conversations can’t last forever. Louis waves his hand. “It’s fine. _[Ὑπίαινε](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.1g8v4qbv72iy)_ , Harry.”

“That’s not my name.”

Louis just grins; Herakleitos is doing that smile again, the bemused one, like it’s a private joke between them even if he doesn’t quite understand.

“Harry,” Herakleitos echoes, rolling the word around. Then, as though it was his idea in the first place, says, “Yes. I’ll take it.”

“Good,” Louis chuckles. “Now go, your mother’s waiting.”

Harry follows his sister, tugging playfully at a curl of hair that’s escaped her hair net. The sanctuary seems duller now, even the sigils on the temples pulsing less brightly than they were before; sound rushes back in now that Louis isn’t hanging on Harry’s every word, idle conversation and the wind harmonizing around him.

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

Louis jumps, turns. Harry is there once more, watching him, leaned against a white pillar. Not quite pleadingly, not quite hopeful. Like he’s already resigned to a no, and he’s telling himself it’s okay. Still, there’s something there that makes Louis want to say yes, that tells him Harry wants that too. To say of course, to say _I’m not leaving anytime soon_.

But no. He shouldn’t be here tomorrow. There’s a man dying in China and he’s taking his dynasty with him, there’s a civilization in the deserts of what will someday be the New World that could use help pulling water from the ground to survive, there’s a Grecian goddess on a nearby mountain who Louis should probably placate since he used her temple as an excuse to talk to a human boy with a lopsided, wonderful grin.

But.

“Yes,” Louis says. “I’ll be here.”

The smile on Harry’s face is worth anything Hera could throw at him.

 

* * *

 

It should end there. The entire tale should start and end in Elis, an immortal being caught in the hands of a human for a few minutes, just long enough to make a lasting impression on both sides.

Louis should go, to China to Mesa Verde to Ipswich to Derbent, to anywhere that doesn’t have a Herakleitos waiting for him to show up the next day. He should go and let this human be among his own kind, let his life play out as though Louis was never in it. Harry would be disappointed, of course, but his memory is fallible, just as fragile as the rest of him. In a few months, he’d forget the color of Louis’ eyes, in a year he wouldn’t remember the words they spoke. It was, by any account, a harmless conversation: an exchange of names, a discussion of what events brought them together, some meaningless back-and-forth about the gods that Harry assumed was some sort of strange joking on Louis’ part.

(Was that all that really happened? An entire exchange lasting perhaps five minutes, tops, with nothing of major significance happening in the duration? It felt like a lifetime, it felt like an _eternity_.)

(But maybe significance isn’t tied up in fanciful words or actions or the length of time spent together; maybe the significance of the conversation rests in the way Harry laughed, the way he tilted his head when Louis spoke as if to hear every word without interruption, the way the breeze plucked at the hemlock in his hair.)

Louis’ memory, unlike Harry’s, isn’t fallible, or short-lived. He remembers everything, including things that haven’t yet come to pass. The entirety of human history and future runs like a stream in the back of his mind, with wars and peace and births and deaths and speeches and treaties and anything else of importance stuck to certain segments, certain days, like pins stuck in locations on a map. Louis knows that here in this year, Caligula was assassinated and Agrippa was made king of Judea and, right there pinned in Louis’ mind as though it was a world event, something that changed everything, Louis knows that he met a boy named Harry.

So he doesn’t go. He _can’t_ go.

The world is old and Louis is even older, but this, somehow, is new. And Louis doesn’t think it’s just because he has never really interacted with humans before, always watching from a distance. He didn’t have to speak to them to know how they were, all full of petty fears and instabilities, insecure in their own humanities. He looked at Harry and he knew, he knew he wasn’t the same.

The next day, Louis passes through the ward around Hera’s temple with another slight shudder, finding Harry already there waiting for him, toe tapping impatiently.

At the sight of Louis he smiles, wide and excited and happy, and even if this is a terrible, terrible mistake, Louis can’t bring himself to regret it.

 

* * *

 

A product of being immortal, one can safely assume, is that each day passes and seems exactly like the one before, until one suddenly looks back to realize a decade has gone by.

Or, at least, that’s how Louis’ life went before Elis. Before Harry.

He’d never bothered with humans before. They weren’t his problem, and seemed more trouble than they were worth. He had enough on his plate, what with the whole host of angels and immortals and their myriad of problems.

As it turns out, humans are _fascinating_. Their actions have little to no effect on the cosmos, there’s rarely even an effect on _each other_ , but they are embroiled in emotional skirmishes and egotistical sparring with an intensity as though any wrong word could bring humanity itself tumbling down. Immortals can be petty too, this Louis knows well, but he can spend an afternoon with Harry on their bench outside Hera’s temple and hear more threats and arguments from the humans walking by than the immortal classes could issue in a whole _decade_.

In the future, humans will get to the point where those who are only interested in studying particular green-shelled crabs on the bottom of only particular parts of the ocean will have the chance to devote their time entirely how they want. That's how Louis feels, here in this bit of land next to a bit of water, a bit of life in the grand expanse of everything: he is a researcher, a collector. He’s learning to understand people, how they tick, and he’s got a world-class teacher to guide him through it.

“That’s Leonidas,” Harry says on Louis’ third day in Elis, leaning close so that his lips brush Louis’ ear. He nods toward a tall, slender man with mousy hair, his face screwed up like he smells something unpleasant. “His house is fighting with Tryphon over land outside the city. Leonidas’ slaves accidentally planted barley on Tryphon’s land, and now Tryphon says he should get the profits when it’s sold.”

“But he didn’t buy the seeds, or do the work,” Louis refutes quietly, watching Tryphon pointedly turn his back on Leonidas.

“Doesn’t matter, he owns the land where it grew. Now he’s saying if he doesn’t get the profits, he won’t allow Leonidas’ men to come back onto his land to harvest it so that no one gets to profit.”

“Incredible,” Louis murmurs, watching Leonidas and Tryphon eye each other from across the marketplace. Harry laughs, then points at a woman buying silks nearby and begins to explain her drama with the fishmonger.

Human scandals are even more fascinating when they directly involve people Louis knows; the longer he stays in Greece, the longer he roams the Elis streets with Harry beside him, the more he comes to recognize the faces around him. The goldsmith who urges Harry’s sister (Gamena, but she looks more like a Gemma so that’s what Louis calls her, and that’s what sticks) to view his delicate necklaces and brooches, the fruit merchant who likes Harry and lets him steal a couple of grapes as they pass, the palaestra guard who winks in greeting when the other guard isn’t watching.

“He’s trying to save money to go to Athens,” Harry says under his breath as they leave the goldsmith’s stand one morning, Gemma once again tempted by his wares but not enough to spend the coin in her purse. She’d lingered for a long time on a golden Herakles knot, the curves inlaid with precious stones, before they’d walked away. “His wife and children are already there, but they’re living with his family until they can afford to live on their own.” Louis looks over his shoulder and catches the way the goldsmith’s shoulders slump as, once again, he fails to make a sale.

About the fruit merchant, Harry whispers, “Her son was a friend of mine when we were young, but he fell ill and died. She’s always been kind to me, but I think I make her sad.” She does look wistful when Harry snags a couple of grapes, Louis notices, and his stomach twists in sympathy even if he can’t really understand how that feels.

The guard at the palaestra “wants to marry Gemma,” Harry confides with a grin, nodding back when the guard winks his greeting. “She keeps saying no, but he says he won’t give up.”

“Tenacious of him,” Louis says as they take a seat on their bench, the geese in the fountain nearby accustomed to their presence by now. “Why does she say no? Does she not love him?”  

Harry’s brow wrinkles. “I’ve never asked.”

“Well why would she agree to marry him if she didn’t love him?” Louis asks, matching Harry’s frown. “I thought that was the purpose of marriage. To signify two people are in love and committed.”

“There are lots of reasons to get married,” Harry shrugs. “To continue a family line, to make sure a woman is taken care of if her family is gone, for a dowry or to gain property...”

“Yes, but are any of those reasons to _want_ to get married, or are they reasons people _have_ to get married?”

Harry frowns deeper, letting the question sink in. Louis lets him ruminate, watches the clouds pass lazily overhead, watches a priest laying an offering at the feet of Zeus’ statue. Watches questions and answers run themselves ragged across Harry's expressions.

If regular, non-Harry humans are interesting, then Harry is more striking than lightning. Louis could spend a millennium watching him move, hearing words roll off his tongue. He's spent centuries on earth and nothing has captivated him the way this person has, charm and wit and care and wild Hera-curls, an ocean of experiences and thoughts inside him that Louis wants to dive head-first into. When they part ways that evening, Harry is still lost in thought and Louis is still so enraptured by him he doesn’t even mind.

The next morning, instead of a standard greeting, Harry says, “I asked Gemma if she’s in love with the palaestra guard and she threw an apple at me.”

“So is that a yes, or a no?” Louis asks, bemused.

“I have no idea.”

 

* * *

 

Time passes, and if Louis thought his fascination with Harry would wear off, he was sorely mistaken.

Louis could spend a century parsing Harry’s thoughts like a miner chiseling precious metals. Harry sends Louis a crooked smile and Louis’ ribcage thumps; or maybe it’s not his ribcage but whatever lives under it, something that goes wild when Harry’s eyes meet Louis’, when their hands brush as they walk. He doesn’t understand Harry in the slightest, and yet he feels like he’ll never know anyone else so intimately.

They spend every day together: Harry wakes at dawn to help the baker deliver his stock of bread to the market, an easy way to earn a few drachmas and it gives him something to do until Louis wakes at a more reasonable time, when the sun is actually up.

(“Where do you live?” Harry asks once, and Louis stammers out something about a villa near the river instead of admitting to Harry that he sleeps in Hera’s temple, he and his conjured bed both invisible to any humans who might be around.)

(Louis doesn’t think Hera would mind. If she ever pops in for a visit, Louis will be sure to get formal permission.)

But then, once Harry’s deliveries are finished and Louis is awake and decently ready to deal with people, their days truly begin.

 

Some days, they don’t leave the house where Harry’s mother dyes clothing for the wealthy and powerful, silks turned opalescent blue from woad, royalty wool dipped purple from indigo plants, war-cloaks and sandals dyed crimson with madder. The air is always heavy with steam and fire there, heavy and oppressive, but still Louis likes it: the light teasing between Harry and his mother as they work in perfect, practiced sync, being invited into the little familial bubble over lunches and watered-down wine, watching Harry unclip his chiton so his chest is bare to keep the fabric away from the dyeing vats.

The first day he does that, the sun shining brightly overhead and pulling sweat to lay on their skin, Louis sees a wide, dark swath of skin across Harry’s torso for the first time. Harry notices, of course.

“I was a clumsy child,” he grins, as though he’s not still coltish in his movements, grown too fast into long limbs and a broad chest. He stills when Louis lays a hand over the scar, though, the dark skin cooler at the sensitive curve of his waist.

“What happened?”

“I tripped and fell next to the fireplace,” Harry says, gesturing idly back over his shoulder at the house, the empty square in the wall blackened with ash and soot visible from here through the open windows. “A log rolled off the fire and burned me.” His voice is carefully casual, but Louis can hear his heart ricocheting in his chest, and for a moment he’s all too aware of his own hand pressing against Harry’s sensitive skin. But he withdraws his touch and smiles up at Harry, and Harry’s heartbeat settles back into something more normal.

“Good thing you outgrew that clumsiness, right?” he teases, and Harry tries to cover his grin with mock outrage.

On pleasant days Louis and Harry help Anthousa (“Call me Anne, _[παιδί μου](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.t1vtpa8l3hr5)._ ”) carry her basins out to the small, walled-in garden so they can work in the sunshine, the light coloring Harry and Louis’ arms and faces with deep tans as the summer reaches its zenith. They tell stories and myths to pass the time; Louis tells the slightly edited versions of his favorite stories, Noah’s flood and Jonah’s whale and Adam and Eve in the garden. Harry’s are full of his own personal embellishments, inside jokes with his mother or Louis that set them off in giggles.

Anne is by far the best, though, her low, soothing voice painting brilliant pictures of the gods and goddesses of Olympus, the battle of the titans for control of the world, Theseus and the minotaur, Achilles and Patroclus on the battlefield for Troy.

“Sometimes,” Anne confides to Louis as Harry tries to listen in, “when Harry was very small, he wouldn’t go to bed until I walked with him through every room in the house, making sure that the cyclops or the titans weren’t hiding in our rooms, waiting to get him.”

Louis grins, shooting Harry a wink through the steam, and takes the chance to tease Harry for it mercilessly later, walking with him from room to room and calling loudly, “No titans in here, Harry! You’re safe!”

 

On other days, they follow Gemma and her friends around the marketplace, watching her haggle for food or trinkets, exchanging gossip like commodities and smiles like treasures. Louis likes the atmosphere of the market, the crush of people on each side, mothers piling baskets high with fruits and grains, soldiers watching for trouble nearby, their swords polished and gleaming in their sheaths.

He likes watching others watch Harry, girls with hope in their eyes that Harry doesn’t seem to notice, little boys tugging on the hem of his chiton and begging him to play gladiators with them. (Sometimes they rope Louis into playing too, and he’s not quite sure he’d ever experienced pure joy before chasing a group of five-year-olds around on his hands and knees, he and Harry roaring like the lions in the Coliseum as the little warriors brandish their wooden play swords.)

He likes becoming a familiar sight next to Harry, an expected presence even if no one really knows who he is or where he’s from. Months pass and the call changes from _Harry, there you are!_ to _hello, boys! We were wondering if we’d see you two today_ and something about that makes Louis’ stomach flip.

 

Some days Louis’ need for adventure gets the best of him, and he pleads for Harry to take him somewhere amazing, somewhere spectacular. They steal onto the warships when the patrols are otherwise occupied and then leap into the river to escape the guard when they’re found. They climb the roofs of sprawling villas, looking out to see the winding blue of the river escape into the faint, horizon-stretching blue of the sea. And some days all they do is terrorize the town in the sweetest way possible, joking and laughing and distracting the merchants, setting little competitions for themselves like who can get the grumpy farmer at the market to smile first, or who can convince and coerce the rich men and women to give them more coins for sweetbreads.

“You got _how much?”_ Louis asks one day, astonished and bemused as Harry pulls a handful of silver drachmas out of his pocket and dumps them onto the bench they’re sitting on. “How did you _do_ that?”

Harry just dimples and shrugs coquettishly, and then gives half to Louis so they can hunt down some delicacies.

 

But Louis’ favorite days are the ones where he doesn’t have to share Harry at all, even with his own need for action and excitement. They walk along the riverbed and pick up stones, shells, bits of driftwood in interesting shapes. They make deliveries for Anne, and Louis watches Harry gape, wide-eyed, at the entrances to the wealthy villas, the wives of governors and generals waiting for their freshly dyed clothes. They spend hours and hours in front of Hera’s temple, on the bench they’ve claimed as their own, and now when Louis shivers as he passes through her protective wards it almost feels like a welcome, a roll of chills up his spine to let him know he’s in his new favorite place in all the universe.

“Do people marry for love where you come from?” Harry asks, about a week after the first time they’d talked about Gemma and the palaestra guard. Louis hadn’t noticed that it still weighed on his mind, but it seems like it does, the words pre-planned and careful. “Not that you’ve told me where you’re from, of course.”

No, that is one secret Louis still keeps close to his chest. He doesn’t think Harry would scream and run anymore, but that little niggle of apprehension remains that keeps him from being fully honest. Harry used to prod and poke for answers, but he seems to have made his peace with not knowing, at least for now.

“We…” Louis starts carefully. “We don’t have marriage, in the same sense that you do. If people have strong enough bonds between them then they elect to stay together, but they aren’t bound by laws or social rules.”

“No marriage at all?” Harry asks incredulously.

“Not really,” Louis hedges. “If two of… two of us feel that strongly about each other, there’s no need to involve others.” Harry still doesn’t get it, Louis can tell, though he’s trying hard to pretend he does. “Sometimes the people involved only want to be with each other, and that’s similar to your” — he stops himself just in time from saying _human,_ but it’s a near miss — “Greek marriages. But sometimes these… _bonds_ , these groups, are more like families rather than couples.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Louis digs for an example. “Back, erm. Back home, there’s a person called Lottie.” Cassiel is her name, actually, but just like Louis she’ll one day adapt to the times, taking the name Charlotte, then Lottie; some of the more old-fashioned angels still call her Cassiel but most don’t, not anymore. It’s a future that’s sure to happen, so most have already adjusted to it. “She and I… we have the same job, essentially. She is younger than I am but she was also chosen to do what I do, and so we stick together like a family would, for the most part.”

Last he saw Lottie was when they all gathered in Rome, the Dominions overseeing the changing of the guard — quite literally, because a whole new host of guardian angels flooded the emperor’s palace when Claudius took Caligula’s throne and it was Louis and Lottie’s job to control the transition — before he left for Greece and she left for Mesopotamia. He can feel her, though; it’s tough, at this distance, but he can feel her presence as though she’s standing right next to him, can feel the warmth of her thoughts as she acknowledges him reaching out.

“In my heart, she’s my sister,” Louis continues, smiling softly as the connection with Lottie fades away, the little echoes of life in another place disappearing. “We don’t have a mother, or. Um. I mean, the same mother. But she’s the closest thing I have to family.”

Harry is wide-eyed. “You’ve never mentioned a job,” he accuses, somewhat gently. “ _Or_ a sister. What do you do? Are you working now? Does your- does Lottie live here?”

“I do have a job, but I’m not working now,” Louis chuckles. “And Lottie knows where I am, but she’s not here. She’s doing her own work, and when we need to we’ll see each other again.”

“You’re so cryptic,” Harry sulks.

Louis laughs again, patting Harry’s knee. “Sorry, Harry. But if it makes you feel any better, it’s for your own good.”

“It doesn’t make me feel better at all, actually,” he says.  

Louis is well aware, so he changes the subject. “Tell me about Gemma and the palaestra guard. Has she said anything?”

Harry visibly perks up a little at Louis’ question, even if he tries to stifle the reaction a moment later. “No. She’s being oddly silent about it all. And I don’t know how to get her to listen, but I think the guard could be good for her!”

“Maybe finding out his name first would help?” Louis suggests, biting back a grin. “Learning some basic information about a man before insisting he’s perfect for your sister could go a long way.”

“Good idea!” Harry says, jumping to his feet. “Let’s go talk to him.”

(They’re eventually chased away by the guard captain and chastised for distracting Cosmas — a fitting name for a man who looks at Gemma as though he’s seen every star, but still thinks she shines even brighter — but Louis has a plan. That evening, he and Harry sneak away to find the goldsmith, Harry’s coin purse jingling with the drachmas he’s saved from his morning bread deliveries. When Harry isn’t looking, Louis waves his hand and conjures up a few more drachma, just in case, and so when Harry pours the pile of silver onto the goldsmith’s counter, he’s pleasantly surprised to see he’s got more than enough to buy what he wants, and the goldsmith is ecstatic to make a sale. They take the Herakles knot armband Gemma had lingered over just that morning, thanking the goldsmith profusely, then sneak back to the palaestra to smuggle the armband to Cosmas.)

(The next day, Gemma has the [Herakles knot](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.2hvz4lew7jb3) on her arm and a permanent blush on her face, Harry is grinning so widely through the whole day that Louis finds himself smiling, too, and Louis slowly begins to comprehend that he’s in deeper than he even realized.)

 

* * *

 

Harry and Louis are lounging in the late summer sun on their bench outside Hera’s temple when a couple staggers around the corner, giggling and whispering.

“I missed you, _Ψυχή μου_ ,” a young man says, cupping a girl’s face. Her hands find the front of his chiton as their mouths meet.

“I missed you too,” the girl echoes, between kisses.

Harry clears his throat and the couple springs apart, going red. “Ah, Herakleitos!” the girl says, wide-eyed. “We didn’t know-”

“Go on, Euanthe,” Harry laughs, waving them on. “Find somewhere else. This spot is taken.”

Euanthe’s suitor gives Harry and Louis a long, bemused look before he’s pulled away, presumably to find another place to kiss each other without interruptions. Louis’ face feels hot, though they haven’t been sitting in the sun for long, the press of his leg against Harry's stealing all of his attention.

“What was that he called her?” he asks after a few minutes. His voice comes out scratchy.

Harry raises an eyebrow. “You speak Greek fluently.”

“Yes but not,” Louis waves his hands, “colloquialisms, clichés, that type of thing.”

“Ah.” Harry’s cheeks flush a little. “He called her ‘my soul.’”

“Oh,” Louis says. Then, “What are some… others. Other things to call people.”

“Pet names, you mean?” Harry asks, the pink of his cheeks going deeper. They haven’t looked at each other since Euanthe and her boy left them alone. Louis doesn’t know why, but he _is_ sure he’s not going to look at Harry until Harry looks at him first. “Erm, there’s _Καρδιά μου_ , my heart, _μάτια μου_ , my eyes.” He clears his throat and murmurs, “ _χρυσέ μου_.”

“What was that last one?”

“ _Chrysé mou_ ,” Harry pronounces slowly.

“I like that,” Louis says, echoing Harry. “ _Chrysé mou_. What does it mean?”

Harry clears his throat again. “It means ‘my golden one.’”

_Oh._

Louis really likes that.

“Can I call you that?” he asks, and Harry stiffens next to him. Louis finally is able to make himself look, the worry he’s somehow offended Harry overriding whatever strange primal urge kept his eyes averted before. “I don’t have to, I didn’t mean-”

“No, I.” Harry stops. His cheeks are bright red now, his eyes bright. “Yes, you can call me that.”

Louis’ shoulders suddenly release their tension. “Good.” He nudges Harry with his knuckles. “ _Chrysé mou_.”

To Louis’ delight, Harry’s blush doesn’t fade for _hours._

 

* * *

 

_Elis, Greece | AD 41_

It’s been six months since Louis first came to Greece, and the hot, dry summer has finally faded out into autumn. Harry and Louis pool drachmas to buy new cloaks, the breeze off the river chilly as it sweeps around them.

Something’s happening, Louis can feel it; not here in quiet Elis, where Grecians move as they always have, as though time will wait for them to do what they want. No, it’s half a world away, somewhere different and new; forces are gathering, history is happening. It’s an urge like an itch in the back of Louis’ head; he doesn’t get direct orders from the Seven anymore, but this is about as close as he can get to an official summons before Michael himself shows up and drags him away. Louis can feel Lottie’s probing, questioning thought; she’s there, obeying the summons and wondering why Louis isn’t there with her, wondering if everything is alright.

_Fine,_ he pushes back to her, concentrating hard on making the message pass through. _I'm fine here._

And he stays in Elis. With Harry.  

He can’t imagine going back to hopping around the world, staying aloof from people as though he doesn’t see them. As it turns out, he _likes_ people. Angels are boring. Predictable. _Pedantic_. But _people_ : people are kind and rude and petty and charming and vindictive and sweet and _interesting_ and he’s _happy_ here, among them. They’ve made him happy.

So he ignores the feeling in the back of his head. He ignores Lottie’s nudging, and the growing awareness of the call to go somewhere else.

Instead, he walks with Harry to Hera’s temple, early moonlight streaming down on them. Harry’s got a bit of cooled honey in his pocket, a placating offering for Hera to help his mother through her allergies as the farmers start to reap the summer crops. The night is mostly quiet, families ensconced in their homes for the evening, revelers at the taverns on the river too far to shatter the peace.

“Mother finished Gemma’s wedding dress today,” Harry says, the words only a little quieter than their footsteps on the stairs, the Propylon a dark shape above them.

“Oh, that’s good news,” Louis replies. Gemma and Cosmas’ wedding is unique, because Gemma doesn’t have a father or uncle to give blessing to her betrothed, and Cosmas, as a mere palaestra guard, doesn’t quite make enough money to be a suitable husband by traditional standards. Still, the two of them are overwhelmingly happy, almost sickeningly so, and Gemma will be married by her twenty-first birthday, so no laws will be broken.

Harry hums in agreement. “Mother is happy too, I think. She worried about Gemma being married to someone cruel or boring.” Harry takes a deep breath as they pass through the Propylon, taking a left around Philip’s memorial and through the wards around Hera’s temple. Harry sets the honey at her feet, lost in thought. Moonlight surrounds him like a silver outline.

It struck Louis, not that long after meeting Harry all those months ago, that Harry is the only human he has ever met whose soul Louis has not seen. It’s an automatic reaction, usually, a quick intake that lets an angel know who exactly they’re dealing with; normally it’s the first thing Louis does when approached, but something kept him from looking when Harry walked up to him the first time.

And it’s odd, a bit like being blinded in that one area when it comes to his best friend. Louis probably knows the immortal claims on every single other human in Greece: the goldsmith’s soul is the same color as his jewelry, the fruit merchant’s is the same silver as the drachmas that rattle in her pocket, Cosmas’ is gentle yellow like morning sunlight, Gemma’s is deep, striking gold like the Herakles knot around her wrist. Anne’s is gold, too, but more murky — common among mothers, who are morally upright and good, decent people until their children are in danger, and who then will do anything, break any laws set by gods or man, to save what is theirs — while Harry’s father, who Louis has never met but who he can read in the belongings he left behind when he went to war, had a soul silver like the reflection of stars on water. He knows all that, but he doesn’t know Harry’s.

Louis thinks that Harry’s soul is gold. It could be silver: it would be bright, not nasty dulled slate or vindictive cool grey. He’s cunning, Harry is, and he’s loyal to the point of doing what needs to be done — good or bad — to keep his loved ones safe. So Harry’s soul might be silver, sparkling like frost on the world. The downfall of those with bright silver souls, though, is that they’re actually good people in public, doing right by everyone; it’s in private where their selfishness shows, their anger or jealousy or greed. But Louis has seen Harry in the crowds of the marketplace just like he has seen him when he thinks he’s all alone, sitting in the carved window of his mother’s small house, watching ships on the river. And Harry is always _, always_ good.

Louis imagines his soul isn’t just colored gold but cast in it, gilded like an emperor’s throne, shining like a king’s crown.

But he isn’t going to check. He has so many things he already can’t share with Harry, by dint of being who they are, _what_ they are; human and angel, from entirely different worlds that just happened to intersect long enough for them to meet. This one thing, such a normal piece of knowledge by Louis’ standards, seems one step too far.

And, really, Louis doesn’t _want_ to know. (Well, that’s not strictly true; he _aches_ to know, just like he aches to know everything about Harry, the entirety of his being. But in this one small instance, the slightly more logical part of Louis’ mind is calling the shots.) He doesn’t want to look inside Harry and see all that there is to know about him; instead, he wants Harry to _tell_ him everything instead.

He wants to know the deepest darkest crags of Harry’s innermost self because Harry wants that too, not because he’s an angel and he can know the deepest, most intimate parts of _anyone_ just with a single look.

It makes Louis feel more human, to be able to have this one thing go the way other human relationships go. Harry can’t meet his parents, he _never_ wants Harry to have to meet his siblings (no matter how much he thinks they’d love him, a choir of Dominions appearing never signals peace and tranquility). Louis isn’t a nice girl from a good family who Harry can marry and spend the rest of his life with. This is one thing that can go normally, or at least normal by Harry’s standards.

As though waiting for that thought to be complete, Harry clambers to his feet, finished with his prayers to Hera. He pulls his cloak tighter around himself, shivering a little in the cool night.

It’s ironic, Louis thinks later, that he’d been so trapped in his own thoughts of giving Harry one normal, human experience that he doesn’t even notice something very much inhuman right in front of his face.

“Louis.”

 

It’s not odd to hear his own name; that’s not what’s strange. What’s odd is that it isn’t paired with Harry’s. They’re a matched set, Louis and Harry, at least according to the people of Elis. No longer two, but one. That should’ve been his first clue something was amiss.

The second clue could probably be the bright, unnatural light suddenly filling Hera’s courtyard, pouring off of someone appearing slowly in front of them, materializing out of nothing into something.

“ _[Θεέ μου](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.hv76xe4ebt4q)_!” Harry curses, shocked. He jumps back a few steps automatically, taking Louis with him when he snags a hand in Louis’ cloak, until they’re back inside the columns (and, unknown to Harry, the protective ward) around Hera’s temple. Louis feels safer almost immediately, though the ward is definitely meant to be keeping him out as well.

“Louis,” the voice says again, and this time Louis isn’t so surprised that he doesn’t recognize it.

“ _Lottie?”_

“Wait,” Harry says, hand still tight around Louis’ arm. “What?”

The light around Lottie’s form fades, leaving sunburst spots in Louis’ vision that he has to blink away. She’s wearing a long-sleeved robe that sweeps the ground, belted over a dress fastened with a brooch on her shoulder. Her hair was light blonde last time he saw her, but to keep from drawing attention in Parthia she’s gone brunette, tangled curls pulled back with a headdress. Her wide blue eyes are lined with kohl, expression blank but hiding multitudes.

“Louis,” she says for a third time. When he doesn’t immediately step towards her, sweeping her up into a warm hug as per usual, her head tilts just the tiniest bit to show her confusion. “We have to go.”

She doesn’t say why, or where; she knows he knows, that he’s been feeling it, the urge to go, to do what he was created to do. “I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” she says, exasperation leaking through. “Of course you can. Michael is calling, the archangels are assembled. We’re only missing you.”

“Archangels?” Harry asks from behind Louis, his voice cracking. “Louis, what is going on?”

“I’m not going,” Louis says, voice dropping lower. “Lottie. I can’t go.”

“Louis,” Harry whispers again. Louis feels him freeze when Lottie’s eyes flick to him, her blue irises burning for a second like cool flame as they sweep him, head to toe, assessing him like he’s just some _human._ Just another in a long line; not like he’s special or interesting or _good._

Louis’ skin prickles. She doesn't mean anything by it, he knows that, but surely if she took a second look she'd know. She'd see what he sees.

“Who are you?” Lottie asks.

Louis turns the slightest bit, keeping Lottie in his line of sight as he watches Harry swallow, the fear rolling off of him in waves.

“H-” he stammers, “Herakleitos.”

Lottie looks back to Louis, her brows scrunched in bemusement. “He's just a human. Is this what you're getting all out of sorts over? A little human?”

“As opposed to what?” Harry asks tremulously, but he shrinks back when Lottie shoots him another unimpressed look.

“This is ridiculous,” Lottie sighs. “The entire host is in Nanyue. The battle starts any moment, we’re stalling on your behalf. We have to go.”

She reaches out, takes Louis’ arm, pulling at him like the little boys who tug on the hem of Harry's chiton, begging to play gladiators.

“I'm not going!” Louis insists.

“Yes, you are!” Lottie says. She tugs hard on Louis’ arm and he can’t stop the reaction, the automatic rush of _no_ and _don’t_ and _ENOUGH._ His wings snap into existence, burning brightly on the edges of his vision, flared wide in warning. The world has gone red, his eyes fiery. His sword glitters in his hand, the stone in the pommel gleaming bright blue.

He is Louis no longer. He's the angel he's been trying to hide for nigh on six months.

“Fuck!” Harry cries out behind Louis, and there's the distinct sound of boots scraping as he scrambles backwards. Louis will explain in a moment, he _will_ , but for now he keeps his eyes on Lottie; her eyebrows are raised and her own sword glitters in its sheath at her side, but she doesn't move to defend herself, doesn’t even look worried. Confused, maybe. Intrigued.

They haven't needed words to communicate in centuries, and being within arm’s reach of each other makes the connection crystal clear. Lottie flicks another infinitesimal glance at Harry, the tone of her thoughts surprised. _All this over a_ human _?_

Louis wants to refute the implication, to tell her it's more than what she thinks, that it's not as strange as she's making it. But he can’t, not really; it _is_ strange, it is unusual. Harry _is_ just a human, but he’s _Louis_ ’ human.

Instead of a rebuttal, even a weak one, what pours out of him is a jumble of pushed-down feelings, the nostalgia of starlit walks by the river and the way Harry's knuckles feel like soft-edged fire when they brush Louis’ hand. Lottie takes it all in, her eyes going wide, wider, her mouth dropping open in surprise.

“Oh, Lou,” she says, and it's only at Harry's intake of air that Louis realizes she's switched to [Enochian](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.5nvqf7jq7qu4). “What have you done?”

“Please,” is all he says in answer; please don't make him go, please don't make him leave Harry, please don't tell him just how _ridiculous_ it is to be an immortal who would give up everything for an insignificant, fragile mortal.

Louis’ wings flicker and fade out of existence once more, his sword dematerializing. It's dark now in the courtyard of Hera’s temple, the sigils and wards sizzling quietly from the outburst of Louis’ power.

He's Louis once more, and yet he's not sure he can ever _just_ be Louis again.

“I can let you have tonight to… settle your affairs,” Lottie says finally, switching back to Greek so Harry can understand her as well. “That's the best I can do, Louis. Michael is waiting for us, and we have to go.”

Louis bows his head; Lottie should, by all rights, snag Louis by the wrist and drag him to his station right this instant. He's neglected his job for months, and he can't play at being human forever. No matter how much he'd prefer that.

“I understand,” he murmurs. He steps close to Lottie and wraps her in a hug, and when he pulls back he straightens the headdress he'd knocked askew. _Love you,_ he thinks fervently.

He gets a soft _love you too, of course_ in return, the sentiment echoing quietly in his head as Lottie smiles, still looking a bit befuddled by Louis and what she saw inside his head.

Then she's gone, probably to see her friend Aphrodite at Olympus since she’s so close, or maybe back to Michael for an update. She'll keep her word, and she won't be back before morning, but that promised time seems fleeting as seconds pass and still Louis can't turn around to face Harry and see his reaction. Louis can't hear the sound of the river flowing, or of night insects chirping in the trees; the world has held its breath to see what happens next.

He turns.

Harry is hidden halfway behind a column, peering out at Louis and shaking. He's looking at Louis like he's seeing something impossible, but that's because he _is;_ in Harry's world, best friends don't turn out to be angels in disguise. In _no_ world is that meant to happen, and yet.

“So,” Harry says shakily. “That's your sister.”

“That's Lottie, yes,” Louis answers carefully. Harry snorts, his pupils still wide from adrenaline and fear. He looks like he might pass out at any moment.

“And you- you're an-”

“An angel.”

Harry leans his forehead against the column, then laughs, once, incredulous. A bolt of lightning streaks across the sky overhead; Harry doesn't notice, hovering too close to a breakdown to see it, but Louis can see the sigils on the temples around them brightening. Louis realizes with a jolt that his little spat with Lottie was probably not the most subtle of events, and having it out right in front of Zeus’ wife’s temple was not the best of ideas.  

“Harry, I know this is… a lot,” he tries, and Harry laughs again, slightly more hysterically this time. “And I will explain it all to you, I promise. But we shouldn't probably stay here very long.”

“Why?” Harry asks, chuckling wildly. “What's going to happen, will another angel come to escort us away?”

Another streak of lightning, this one making the air go sharp with static, the hair on the back of Louis’ neck rising ominously. “No,” Louis admits. “Not an angel…”

Harry finally seems to notice the sky crackling with electricity, and he's wide-eyed once more. “Is that-”

“Erm, yes.” A bolt strikes the ground uncomfortably close to them, and Harry yells, jumping closer to Louis out of instinct. Louis takes his hand, and tries his hardest to be soothing. “Alright!” Louis shouts at the angry thundercloud suddenly roiling overhead. “I get it, I’m sorry! We’re leaving!”  

“So you weren’t kidding,” Harry pants as they sprint towards the Propylon, through the gate and down the wide staircase.

The scene suddenly strikes Louis as so inexplicably _Harry,_ trying to hold a conversation as they sprint away from an angry god, that Louis can’t help but grin. “About what?”

“About knowing Hera,” he replies, hurdling a small hedge by the road, “the first time we met.”

A thunderbolt whizzes by overhead and Louis ducks, pulling Harry with him. Harry yelps again, his palm sweaty against Louis’.

“No, not kidding,” Louis answers, weaving them through the empty stalls of the marketplace. “C’mon, we’re almost there.”

“Almost where?” Harry asks, a little frantic as another lightning bolt shoots past them. “Where are we supposed to go to get away from _that?_ ”

He gets his answer when Louis leaps over a low garden wall and into the courtyard of Harry, Anne, and Gemma’s house. There’s a rumble of thunder that sounds a lot like Zeus grumbling in dissatisfaction, but he can’t do anything; Louis has been layering wards over this place for months now. An earthquake couldn’t knock the house down, he’s not worried about some petulant god up on his cloud.

Louis urges Harry to run into the house first, turning to salute mockingly at Zeus as the door shuts them inside. He’ll probably pay for that later; maybe if Lottie really is already in Olympus for a visit, she can smooth things over for him.

Harry leans back against the solid wood of the door, chest heaving from their run. The door won’t actually do much to save them if Zeus is _really_ angry — it is just wood and steel, after all — but the wards on Harry’s room in particular are incredibly strong, and Louis isn’t too terribly anxious about the possibility.

“It’ll be fine,” Louis promises when Harry stays quiet. “He’s not really angry, he’s just embarrassed he didn’t even notice I was here. He tends to lash out when provoked.”

Harry shoots him a baffled look, then crosses the room. He lights a candle, throwing shadows around the room, then perches on the windowsill, drawing a knee up to his chest. He doesn’t say a word, but Louis sighs in answer anyway.

“I should’ve told you,” he starts, but Harry cuts him off.

“Yes, you _should’ve,”_ he says, voice thrumming with worry and anger and fear.

“I wasn’t supposed to stay this long,” Louis protests quietly, a weak reply. “This was never supposed to put you in danger.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asks, then shakes his head. “No, I don’t care. Well, I do, but.” He sighs in frustration, running his hand through his hair. “Who _are_ you? Let’s start with that.”

Louis doesn’t want to do this. He doesn’t want to scare Harry off, not now that he’s in too deep to just walk away. Maybe if this conversation was happening six months earlier it wouldn’t feel like this, but even with all his power he can’t change his own timeline. It’s now or never; he can walk away and spare Harry the knowledge, or he can stay and hope for the best.

He closes his eyes; let no one say he ever dared not to hope.

Louis can hear the moment his human disguise falls away to reveal the real him underneath, his true Form, because Harry gasps, audibly, like he knew something was coming but not _this._

_“Louis,”_ Harry breathes.

Louis opens his eyes.

Harry’s bedroom isn’t large enough to show the real span of his wings, so the tips drape awkwardly over Harry’s bed, his desk. The candle sputters from the rush of wind as they unfurl, but the little flame catches the colors of his wings perfectly; black and blue and purple, speckled with white like the night sky and iridescent. The sigils on Louis’ chest and arms burn like brimstone, like fire. His eyes are fire too, he knows, because the world in his vision has gone red once more. The crown on his head is like a flash of sunlight on steel through the dark as it appears, then burns away into something more like moonlight, glowing and prismatic and constant.

Harry is still there; a good sign, Louis supposes. He hasn’t run away yet. 

“I am Leilel,” Louis says. His voice rumbles, shaking the walls of the room. “Enforcer of the night, Dominion over lessers. I was here Before, and I will be here After.” He lets his human voice fade back in, his vision going normal as the flames fade from his eyes. “And I’m so, so sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Harry puts an unsteady hand on the wall, like his knees can’t quite hold him up. Louis can hear his heartbeat, thundering away in his chest. He takes a tentative step forward, then again. His hand reaches out and touches Louis’ chest, fingertips warm even through the layer of wool that makes up Louis’ chiton.

“You’re real,” he whispers. “You’re not a hallucination.”

“I’m real,” Louis promises. He takes Harry’s hand, holds it tight against his chest. “I’m real.”

 

* * *

 

It’s quiet for a long time after that.

Harry stays perched on the windowsill; Louis wonders if it makes him feel better that the possibility of escape feels like an option. If that’s what it is he’ll let Harry have that comfort (and he definitely won’t mention that as long as Harry’s a human, Louis could track him to the ends of the earth without breaking a sweat).

His eyes are stuck to Louis’ wings, the only part of Louis’ real Form that hasn’t faded away yet.

Louis did that on purpose, knowing that’s the hardest part to reconcile in Harry’s mind: the sigils on his skin, the flash of a crown, the flames flickering in his eyes, those could all be tricks of the light, illusions and play-magic. But there’s nothing about Louis’ wings that can be explained away, nothing about the broad swaths of navy across the black feathers that can be painted with any human brush, nothing about the stardust trailing from the tips that can be replicated with anything found on Earth.

Louis is waiting for the questions to start pouring out of Harry any minute; he’s accepted that his best friend is an angel, he’s survived his first brush with a god, his natural curiosity is sure to shine through at any moment. Louis expects the first thing out of Harry’s mouth to be something about eternity. That’s usually what mortals want to know about, the part that affects them most. Heaven, perhaps; what’s it like up there? It’s been a while since Louis checked in Upstairs, but he could give some details. Or Hell. Is it really that bad? Louis has never been, but hyperbole isn’t an angelic strength, so it’s probably pretty terrible.

He should’ve known better than to think Harry would follow any sort of precedent, though.

“Do you have to go?”

Louis’ heart would break if he had one; despite the lack of actual organs there, pain radiates outward from his chest at the worry in Harry’s voice in a way he didn’t know non-stab wounds could do.

“Yes,” he says reluctantly. “Once I’m called, I have to go.”

Harry goes quiet again, slowly draws his other knee up so they’re both pressed to his chest. “Lottie,” he starts hesitantly, “she said Michael was the one calling you.”

“Yes,” Louis answers again. “Michael is a [seraphim](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.58keqy7dusrh), they’re sort of. Well, they’re the highest in the angel ranks, there are seven of them. If he calls, I can’t refuse. I shouldn’t have made him wait this long, to be honest.”

“Seraphim,” Harry says, like he’s tasting the word. “Is that what you are?”

Louis would laugh, if the situation was less fraught. “No, not me. I’m a Dominion, fourth tier of the big angel ladder. I answer to them.”

“And Dominions…”

“Make sure the rest of the angel population doesn’t cause any trouble,” Louis finishes.

“Right,” Harry says. “Right.”

And then he’s quiet again.

It’s late, or maybe early — Louis has the entirety of time and space running like a loop through the back of his head, but he can’t be bothered to figure out which it is. All he knows is that the deep black of the sky has lightened to purple on the horizon, and his time with Harry is dwindling.

It’s not goodbye. Or, well. It’s probably not goodbye. The heavenly host doesn’t get called in all that often, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be quick; he could be back in Elis within the week.

It doesn’t have to be goodbye.

He _refuses_ for this to be goodbye.

“I’m going to come back,” he says. It startles Harry, his eyes flicking up to catch Louis’, then up to his wings as though to check those are still there, then back to his eyes. “I’m not leaving forever.”

“I want to believe you,” Harry replies quietly, words muffled by his knees.

“It’s the truth,” Louis promises. He folds his wings against his back to keep from knocking them against anything and crosses the room. He kneels slowly in front of Harry, still curled up on the windowsill. Takes his hand, hesitant as he can be. “Harry, with all my power, I swear to you, I _will_ come back.”

It bursts out of Harry like water through a cracked dam: “ _Why?”_ he asks, bewildered. “Why are you saying that? Why are you acting like _I’m_ the frightening one here?”

“Harry-“

“No, really, I don’t understand! You’re an angel, an _angel,_ a real life bit of Heaven in front of me and yet you’re looking at me like I’m- like I’m-“

“Like you’re what?” Louis asks. Harry’s hand is still in his, and it spasms like he’s scared.

“Like I’m the one that’s extraordinary,” Harry whispers. Before Louis can say anything to that, to reassure him that Louis has met every angel, every single one of them, from the lowliest, newest guardian angel to Michael himself and his stupid sword and his ridiculous heavenly armies, and Harry is more interesting than any of them combined; before he can say any of that, Harry speaks again. “You can go anywhere. Why would you come back? What is here that you can’t find anywhere else?”

Louis almost laughs once more, but incredulity shocks him into staying quiet. How can he not see? How can he not _know?_

Louis has been alive since life was a mere concept; he watched the summoning of Man into existence, he was there when Eve took the apple. He’s seen seas break the world into separate pieces, he’s watched empires crumble into dust. He’s seen wildfire consume cities, he’s seen the world painted white with snow. He has known the most beautiful humans to walk the planet, and he has watched the most powerful mortals gather their riches and influence around them and then die just the same as the poorest, weakest humans do. He’s met humans whose motives defy explanation, people who use their lives as battering rams, as tools, as weapons, as chess pieces.

None of that stopped Louis in his tracks.

But Harry did.  

The breeze lifts Harry’s hair, the curls dancing around his face as he waits for an answer. He hasn’t worn his hemlock blossoms since that first day, though it’s not unusual to see him with a daisy crown, or one of Gemma’s jeweled pendants tucked among his curls. Louis always wondered why it was he chose hemlock the day they met, if Harry even knew he was wearing deadly poison as an accessory. He always meant to ask.

It hurts now, sudden and sharp, a knife twist, to think of all the things he thought they’d have time to talk about before he had to leave.

(He’ll be back. He’ll have time to ask. This isn’t goodbye. It _isn’t._ )

(Right?)

“What’s here that I can’t find anywhere else?” Louis asks, barely more than a breath. He tucks a wayward curl behind Harry’s ear, cups his cheek. “ _You.”_

The first ray of morning light breaks over the horizon, splits the navy blue sky into shards of dawn; night is over. Louis’ borrowed time is over.

He leans forward and presses his lips to Harry’s.

A thousand thousand years have never created anything that could match this; Harry’s breath catches and he fumbles for Louis’ shoulders, hands clumsy with want that pours out of him in waves. His knuckles brush Louis’ wings and the jolt of sensation makes them flare wide, throwing the dawn-lit room back into mostly darkness behind him. It’s gentle but paramount, it’s fleeting but necessary. It’s like breathing in lightning and letting it crackle in his veins; like being immersed in liquid thunder, sinking into it like a warm bath.

Harry makes a soft noise in the back of his throat and Louis swallows it, holy blood jumping like a pulse. Harry’s lips are soft, petal pink and precious. He tastes like sweet wine, like honey; Louis wonders if that’s a human thing, or a Harry thing.

Lottie’s here now, Louis can feel the shiver in the air that says they’re not alone anymore, but he doesn’t pull away. Not immediately. Dawn is just breaking, he still has time.

“Louis,” Lottie chides behind him. Harry jumps a little, surprised, his teeth clacking against Louis’. Louis hums and doesn’t let him pull away, pressing another long, lingering kiss to his mouth before he lets him go.

“Come back,” Harry whispers, barely more than a breath of air against Louis’ lips. “Come back to me.”

“Of course,” Louis swears. He can’t step away, can’t do this of his own volition; he reaches a hand back instead, feeling Lottie’s small, soft palm press against his, her fingers squeezing in warning. “I’ll come back, Harry.” The air vibrates around them, Louis’ vision going shimmery. “I promise.”

And then Harry’s bedroom in his mother’s villa in Greece disappears around them, and the smoking battlements of a Han settlement citadel appear.

The heavenly host is here in its entirety already, perched like a flock of multicolored and overdressed birds on every available surface. The humans bustling around in controlled panic can’t see them; the host is here on supervisory basis only.

Michael stands at the centermost point of the citadel wall, his sword aloft. As Lottie and Louis shake off the dizziness from the jump to a new city, Michael makes eye contact with Louis and nods, a greeting and a salute.

He swings his sword forward, points it across the plains to the approaching Han army.

The battle begins.

 

* * *

 

_Nanyue, Jiaohzi (present day Vietnam) | AD 42_

Angel battles are destructive and all-encompassing, but there’s something about human war that’s so much messier. Blood flows and steam rises, swords chip and horses scream. Good people die too early, bad people die without reckoning for their sins.

They’re at Nanyue, a small country on the edge of the Han empire. Two sisters, the [Trưngs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.gs70dr2gwaoq), have retaken control of their land, named themselves queens with the support of their people and a small band of rebelling Chinese villagers. The encroaching army is the Hans, here to take back the city, to crush any rebellion.

The Hans will win. It’s already written, all that’s left is for it to happen. The sisters will be executed, become martyrs for the people. The Han dynasty will continue on, compiling provinces and territories, until China is split into the Three Kingdoms in about two hundred short years.

The heavenly host is to ensure that all happens according to plan. The Trưng sisters are smart, and have desperation on their side, but they are like a fingerprint compared to the fist of the Han empire. It would take a miracle for something else to happen, and the miracle-granters are all here and accounted for. Still, humans are funny. Sometimes things go differently than expected. So the angels watch, just in case.

Louis and Lottie have been stationed at the easternmost tower; they’re invisible to the archers around them, but visible to the guardian angels assigned to protect a certain few of those archers. The guardians influence their humans in their best interests, giving them the intuition to know when to step back, when to reload their quivers.

The morning was spent in battle preparations, the afternoon spent waiting for the Hans to offer one last chance for a surrender. Evening is creeping in as the sisters refuse and take to the front of their ragtag army, proud in their armor, just as they’ll be proud in death. Torches are lit to keep allies from stabbing each other, and a horn rings out, sounding a call to march. As battles go, this one moves quickly; no ridiculous posturing or envoy-sending. It’ll be over soon.

So, really, Louis and Lottie are just here until it’s over; the guardians don’t need help, the Virtues are even further from the battle than the mothers and children hiding in their homes, the Powers are up front behind Michael and his sword, itching to join the battle but knowing they can’t.

Which means:

“That boy,” Lottie says. The eastern tower has cleared of soldiers so they’re alone, no armor clanking to cover her words. “Your boy, your human.”

Louis doesn’t look her way, continues watching over the battle instead. It’s not going well, but it wasn’t ever really meant to. Humans killing other humans, even in organized masses, are always going to be chaotic.  The Han army is slowly circling the rebels.

But not soon enough for Louis to avoid this conversation.

“Yes?”

Lottie picks her words carefully, but she decides on a simple, “Why him?”

_Why him._ It’s a good question.

“He’s,” Louis starts, but breaks off. “I-“ he tries again, but still nothing comes out. Lottie puts her fingers to her mouth, covering a grin. “Hush,” he huffs.

“Never thought I’d get to see you fall in love,” she says easily. So easily that Louis doesn’t even hear the words until he’s agreed.

“Yes, I suppose- wait, what did you say?”

“Love,” Lottie repeats. “That’s what this is, right?”

_No_.

Well…  

It _shouldn’t_ be; immortals have fallen in love with mortals before, but those were demigods and witches and cryptids, not angels. Never angels. Angels are the first children of Heaven, they guide and protect humans but they don’t get _involved._

Louis, because of who he is, _what_ he is: Leilel, fourth-born, Dominion, enforcer of Night, protector of Creation… all those titles say he shouldn’t feel this way. Not about a human, not about anything.

But then what _is_ this, this feeling that has hooked itself into him and refuses to be shaken free? Something that shouldn’t exist, surely.

But it does exist. It’s there, a rooted tree, a paint swirl of emotion that runs through Louis’ sanctified veins.

“He’s…” Louis tries again. “He’s good in a way I don’t really understand, it’s. It’s ambitious and cunning but also generous, and caring. And he loves with this… this _passion_ that changes the entire city around him. And he…” Louis trails off, his smile small and unfit for their location, surrounded by the dead and desperate. “He is my closest friend. He knows me better than I know myself, and that is without even knowing who I _really_ am.”

“Is he one of ours?” Lottie asks. _Gold or silver?_ she’s asking; to her, it’s probably his most important attribute. And Louis doesn’t even know the answer.

“I haven’t looked,” Louis admits. “I wanted to know him without… without already categorizing him into Light or Dark.”

Lottie grins again. “That’s quite romantic, you know.”

“Is it?” Louis asks, deadpan. “Is it romantic to refused to peek at the deepest, darkest part of a mortal’s soul when I first met him just in case we might become friends?”

Lottie laughs, bright and sweet, but as the sound dies away so does her smile. The sisters out on the battlefield have been fully surrounded, their army decimated around them. Louis can see Michael and his host standing just on the edge of the field, watching the final moments of the short-lived war come to a close. Then Lottie speaks, and Louis doesn’t spend another second watching Michael. “How long does he have?”

The words themselves drip with pity, and Louis’ insides cramp from immediate, slashing worry. “What? What do you mean?”

Lottie turns to him, her brow furrowed. “He’s sick, Louis. Surely you see it.”

“No, I-“ Louis stands. He sways a bit with worry, and Lottie’s eyes go wide; his wings unfurl and spread wide in panic. “What do you mean, he’s sick? Sick _how_ , Lottie?"

Lottie just shakes her head, her mouth open a little. Then the answer hits her. “You weren’t using your Vision, you didn’t want to see his soul,” she breathes, then, “Oh, Louis.”

“No,” Louis says, fists clenched so tight his arms burn with it. “I have to- I have to go.”

The Trưng sisters are captured by Han officers at the exact moment Louis closes his eyes and wrenches himself back to Elis, away from duty and back to Harry.

He opens his eyes and sees the river, his heart beating fast at the familiar sight of the Olympic sanctuary on top of the hill, the great gates of the Propylon open wide and welcome. He didn’t realize this little city by the sea had become home, but the warmth that rushes through him tells him that it is.

Then: “Louis?” a familiar voice asks, desperate hope clear in his voice, and Louis understands immediately why this place became home in the first place. Louis turns, and his wings flare wide again, this time for a new reason.

Harry’s standing with his toes at the edge of the water, as though letting the waves steal the heat from his body little by little. Moonlight wraps around him like it’s trying to keep him warm in Louis’ absence, the stars making patterns for Harry to trace in the meantime. He’s wrapped in a cloak, deep green and soft, a crown of hemlocks in his hair. He looks like the old tapestries, a maiden left waiting for her soldier to return from war, a rose held to her chest to remind her of his love.

There’s no rose in sight, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

“Harry,” he breathes. With the way Lottie was looking at him as though he was already the widow at a funeral, he’d almost expected Harry to be gone already, his fragile mortality swept away by some disease he didn’t even see coming. But he’s alive, and he’s _here_ , and he was waiting for Louis because Louis promised he’d come back. Promised he’d come home.

Louis’ whisper is carried on the wind and he sees the moment Harry hears it, his smile spreading wide and wild. He turns, knees knocking clumsily together, and starts to run toward Louis, laughing in excitement.

“Louis!” he cries, giddy. Louis beams back, holding his arms open wide, planning to sweep Harry off his feet and kiss him until he forgives Louis for leaving.

Harry looks perfectly healthy, dashing towards Louis across soft sand. Louis wonders if Lottie got it wrong, if she saw something benign and mistook it for some kind of hidden danger. Louis could take a quick peek to double-check, just a tiny second of blinking his eyes to see what really _is_ instead of the surface of what _appears_ to be, and he'd know for sure.

He doesn't get a chance.

Harry's about twenty feet away when his knees buckle suddenly, sending him flying forward. He crumples unnaturally to the ground and goes still, immediately unconscious.

Angels don't have hearts; don't have any internal organs, actually. Louis’ human visage is little more than a well-place glamour and grace. His body runs off of his own holy blood, like a water wheel churning away.

Still, in the moment after Harry falls, Louis can feel the heart that doesn't exist stop cold in his chest.

His wings flare wide in panic. He runs.

 

* * *

 

Anne and Gemma react about as well as expected to seeing Louis materialize in their home right in front of them, frantic with worry, an unconscious Harry draped in his arms. Anne, clad in nightclothes with her hair loose and informal, gasps and stumbles back, nearly falling on Gemma, who shrieks in surprise and drops the candlestick she’d been holding, the little flame extinguishing itself against the stone floor and throwing the four of them into moonlit darkness.

“Louis?” Anne asks, voice shaking a little. “Is that you? What’s wrong with Harry?”  

“Yes, it’s me, I-“ he says, then curses under his breath. “Hold on.” He wiggles his fingers where they’re supporting the curve of Harry’s spine and directs the flow of energy to the dropped candlestick, the wick still smoldering on the floor. The candlestick rises and takes its place in an empty slot on on the wall, and then Louis snaps his fingers and the flame flickers back to life.

Anne gasps again, more quietly this time, and draws Gemma close to her. “Louis,” she says, like she’s begging for an explanation.

“I don’t have time to explain,” he says shortly, voice only reasonably calm because he can still see the rise and fall of Harry’s chest, breath entering and exiting normally even if he’s unconscious. “Harry’s ill, he collapsed and fainted, and he needs help.”

Anne’s eyes go wide with panic but then settle, forced maternal calm pouring out of her. “Right” she says, then takes a breath and continues. “Gemma, fetch the physician. Louis, bring him to his room, we’ll set him there.” She leads the way as Gemma dashes the other direction, barely sparing a second to throw a cloak over her shoulders to hide her nightclothes before she’s out the door. Anne lights the oil lamp in Harry’s room with the flame from the candle, throwing his unmade bedclothes into shadowed view before Louis steps in front of the bed, laying Harry gently across the sheets.

His hands are shaking and useless, and he can only stand by as Anne finds a bowl of fire-heated water, dipping a spare bit of cloth into it and wiping Harry’s curls back off his face. Harry’s eyes are flickering under his eyelids, like he wants to wake but just can’t.

“You’re not human,” Anne says quietly, not pausing in her ministrations. “Are you?”

Louis has never felt less like the angel he is in that moment, power heavy in his hands and utterly useless now. He can alter the universe with a flick of his fingers, but he can’t pull the sickness from Harry’s body, not without damaging him; someone else probably could, but he can’t, wouldn’t have the faintest idea how. Still, he answers: “No.”

Anne lets out a slow breath. “Can you do anything?”

This answer hurts so, so much worse. “No.”

But.

“Lottie!” he calls, both with his mouth and his mind, and Anne jumps at the sudden bark of noise. Louis will apologize later; he sends the shout out, back to Nanyue, where the rebelling sisters have been buried with honor, where the Han army is back on its way to the capital, where Michael and the heavenly army do their part to clean the mess. A shiver in the air, then Lottie appears a moment later.

She meets Louis’ eyes, then turns immediately to the bed. Harry is still unmoving in his unconscious slump, and Anne hovers over him, between him and the newcomer. Lottie takes a step forward and, softly, asks, “May I?”

Anne looks past her to Louis, checking for reassurance. Her trust swamps through him and he swallows as he nods, wondering if that trust is only offered because Harry’s health and life hang in the balance, or if Harry’s faith in Louis makes others trust him too; either way Anne acquiesces, nodding to Lottie and moving to sit at Harry’s feet, unstrapping his boots like she needs to do something to keep her hands busy.

Lottie takes another step forward until she’s standing over Harry, and then does what Louis didn’t have the desire, the strength, to do; her eyes flare icy blue as she looks at Harry and then _into_ him, pinpointing the cause of all this and narrowing her eyes. She lays her hand on Harry’s abdomen and pauses.

“It’s here,” she says quietly, motioning for Louis. He hovers his hand over hers and, yes, there it is; a dark, malignant growth there under his smooth, unblemished skin, like a painting hiding a hole in a wall. “See it?”

Louis just shakes his head once, violently; he won’t look. He can’t look into Harry and be forced to confront this thing, this disease that saps the life from him when Louis can do nothing. He couldn’t even imagine being able to see Harry’s soul as he thought it was before, bright silver or gold, healthy and happy — he refuses to see it faded and faint from illness, drained of its strength.

“Fix it,” he says, blank. “I don’t- I don’t know what to do, Lottie, fix it.”

“Louis,” she says sadly.

“ _Fix it.”_ His wings flare into existence for the third time that day, his emotions pulsing like some sort of beacon, unruly and overpowering and ripping through him in ways he didn’t know they could do. He can’t- he doesn’t- he’s _lost,_ powerful and powerless all the same in this situation. He’s immortal, he’s of the earth and of the stars and can manipulate elements without a second thought, but this is what matters and he’s worthless, bumbling and weak. _Useless._

“I can’t,” Lottie tells him, laying a hand on his arm. “I have as much experience with human ailments as you do, Louis. And you felt it, it’s been there a while, and it’s spreading.”

Louis did feel it, dark and ominous like a storm cloud brewed inside Harry. Its tendrils are far-reaching, the disease not new but creeping.  

“The physician,” he tries weakly. “He’ll know what to do, he can-“  

“He can give medicine to ease the pain,” Lottie cuts in. “Herbs and potions, nothing more. If this was happening two thousand years in the future, doctors could perhaps fix him. But not now.”

“Then what’s the use of being who I am?” Louis explodes, wings fluttering in agitation. “What’s the use of being an angel who loves a human if I can’t _protect_ him?”

Lottie doesn’t answer; she doesn’t have to. It’s clear on her face.

He was never meant to fall for Harry in the first place.

“I’m sorry, brother,” Lottie whispers. She kisses Louis’ cheek, grabs his chin gently so he has to meet her eyes. “It’s out of our hands. Don’t do anything you shouldn’t.”

Louis doesn’t answer — couldn’t answer, won’t ever swear that he won’t do what needs to be done, not if someone he loves needs his utmost — and her mouth pinches, but she nods in farewell and the air shivers, then she’s gone.

Louis breathes in slowly, a calming motion he picked up from Harry. He steps closer to Harry's bedside, hands clenching and unclenching rhythmically.

Anne reaches over, takes his hand.

For a moment, they're silent, watching the stuttered rise and fall of Harry's clammy chest.

_What do I do?_ Louis thinks desperately. He feels the nudge of sympathy from Lottie inside his own head and he realizes that he must have flung that thought outwards too, pleading for someone to help, and Lottie’s worried non-verbal answer is echoed by his other brothers and sisters in far-off places. They offer no advice, though, just as useless as Louis right now.

If asked, he could conjure up a toy for a child, fill a table with food for a hungry family, rebuild a house fallen during war, but those are minor miracles. He doesn't have something of this caliber in his arsenal.

So, the question remains: _what does he do?_

As though she can hear him, Anne squeezes Louis’ hand. “We must wait,” she says softly, using her free hand to gently straighten the sheet covering Harry’s slumped, sweaty body. “And we must hope.”

Hope. Yes, Louis can hope. It’s all he can do now.

Angel and mother stand over the bed of the boy they both love, and they wait, and they hope.

 

* * *

 

The physician is, as Lottie predicted, [useless](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.hjhz3nrno8l1): he feels at Harry's stomach, humming and tutting, and declares him unsalvageable, as though Harry is the chunks of marble chiseled off in the process of making a statue, rather than a living, breathing human.

“I could operate,” the man sighs heavily, wiping delicately at the sweat on his upper lip, “but it would be most dangerous, and mostly unnecessary. He would not survive the procedure, and I do not have the time.”

Louis’ vision flickers red at the flippant tone, but Anne squeezes his hand again and holds him back. “So there is nothing to be done?” she asks.

“I can make up a salve to keep his fever low,” the physician offers with a shrug. “And a potion for the pain, when he wakes.” He spares a look at Harry, still unconscious, and corrects himself. “ _If_ he wakes.”

Anne lets go of Louis’ wrist and he takes that as permission: his wings flare wide, buffeting the portly physician with a rush of air and making him turn to take in Louis in his full, avenging glory.

He stumbles back, terrified. “What _are_ you?”

Louis can hear the _pit-PAT_ of the man’s overworked heart in his rotund chest thumping heavily in fear, and that and the prominent shake in his voice erase a _little_ bit of the rage Louis is directing at him.

Not much, though.

“I am older and wiser and greater than you will ever understand,” Louis thunders. “Now, you _will_ make the potion. And you will bring it here _immediately_ once you’re finished.”

The physician is pale with terror, pupils huge in his beady eyes. “R-right, immediately, yes!”

Louis exchanges a quick look with Anne, who is impressively blank-faced. There's a flicker of humor in her eyes though, and Louis wants to match it. Some light in the darkness, perhaps.

“And…” he adds, lifting his chin imperiously. “You'll bring us fresh fruit from the stall in the market.”

The physician doesn’t even blink. “Y-yes, of course!”

“The stall with the purple covering, not the blue,” Anne says, then leads toward Louis to say in an undertone, “The one with the purple cover is a regular customer of mine.”

“Purple covering it is,” Louis agrees, fighting hard to keep his mouth from twitching. He flings out a commanding arm. “Now _go_.”

The physician squeaks and scurries away, tripping over himself in haste. In the silence that he leaves behind, Gemma turns to Louis, eyebrows quirked. “That's a useful trick.”

“Mm,” Louis hums, his wings flexing. “Didn't even have to use my sword.”

Gemma grins. “You don’t have a sword.”

“I do too!” Louis says, affronted.

“Children,” Anne chides, still smiling herself. “Come help, we’ll move Harry’s bed to under the window. He’ll like the breeze.”

Louis doesn't tell this little not even forty-year-old human that he is _not_ a child, has _never_ been one, and has been alive since before her ancestors discovered fire, but she raises an expectant eyebrow at him and he rushes to help, properly chastised. He has Gemma and Anne help direct him as he snaps his fingers, directing a flow of energy to Harry's bed, lifting it gently off the ground so as not to jostle Harry.

Louis glides the bed over to the wall under the wide stone window, the same one where Harry perched and watched Louis with worried eyes after Lottie’s first visit, the same place Louis broke all the rules and kissed him for the first time. If Harry was awake, he could prop himself up with a few pillows and see outside, straight over the low garden wall to the river, to the cargo ships and military vessels docked at the gangways, to the ocean blue and wide beyond that.

But he's not awake, so he can't. None of them mention that, just rearrange themselves to watch Harry’s restless unconsciousness.

The physician is back within the hour, holding a flask of muddy green liquid. “A mixture of opium and mint,” he says, bowing low, never looking directly at Louis. “This will numb the worst of the pain.”

“Good,” Louis says. “And?”

The physician brandishes a basket of fruits and breads, bowing again.

“Excellent.” His eyes flare red and his wings snap open again. “Now _go.”_

Even Anne stifles a small laugh as the physician tumbles out of the room for the second time, frantic.

“We should fall ill more often,” Gemma jokes as she pops a grape into her mouth, but the laugh catches in Louis’ throat as he remembers exactly why they’re here, why their insides ache with worry and nausea. Anne is silent too, turning back to Harry, who looks small and breakable in his wide, sunlit bed.

More slow, agonizing hours pass until Harry wakes, and when he does it isn't a slow, peaceful process. Evening silence is startled as he jolts upright, eyes squeezing shut as he presses a white-knuckled fist to his abdomen, groaning.

Anne and Gemma rush forward. Louis hangs back.

He's suddenly not sure if Harry will even want him here, anxiety swamping through him; they left things so oddly, a torrid stolen kiss and then a moonlit reunion before Harry collapsed, and he's not sure if he's welcome.

“Mother?” Harry rasps, voice rough and rusted from disuse. His eyelashes flutter open, his gaze settling on Anne. He turns to find, “Gemma.”

“Careful,” Anne says, a hand to Harry’s back as though she’s the only thing keeping him upright.

And then he looks beyond them, his sleep-dulled eyes widening when he sees Louis there in the glow of a sunset, and he breathes, “Louis?”

Louis’ name in Harry’s voice stirs up a cyclone inside him, and he whispers, “Hello, _chrysé mou_.”

“I had the strangest dream,” Harry groans, leaning back and covering his eyes with his forearm. “Louis, your sister showed up but she was an angel, can you believe? And so were you, and you said you had to go because an archangel was calling you away to war, but then you ki-” he catches himself, clears his throat, “you said goodbye and then I waited for you on the beach until you returned.”

The ringing silence makes Harry drop his arm, taking in the pallid faces of his sister and mother. Harry isn't sure what his own face is doing, but it's probably not reassuring.

“Harry,” Louis murmurs, but doesn't know what else to offer.

Harry looks his way, a moth to a flame, and then it's like his eyes catch onto Louis’ wings for the first time since waking. They go wide, wider than Louis has ever seen, wide with understanding, wide with panic.

“Louis,” he gasps, “Louis, your wings, they’re out, they’re visible-“

“I know,” Louis reassures him. He wants to step close, take his hand. Kiss him. Kiss him until he’s better. He won’t, though. He gestures to Gemma and Anne. “They know, it’s fine.”

“So does your physician,” Gemma adds, smiling slightly like she’s trying to lighten the mood, squeezing Harry’s hand.

“Physician?” Harry asks. He tries to sit up further, but stops and presses his curled fist to his abdomen again. “What is this, what’s happening?”

The room goes silent, but Anne finally answers. “Harry, _παιδί μου._ You’re sick, baby.”

“Sick?” Harry asks, voice rising. “How? I don’t feel-“ He doubles over, coughs rattling in his chest. His palm is speckled with blood when he pulls it from his mouth, and he stares down at it in horror.

“We’re going to make it better,” Gemma says, confident except the shake in her words. “Right, Louis?”

Louis doesn’t answer immediately, and Harry looks up from his hand, his eyebrows tilting in worry. “Why are you standing all the way over there?” he asks. There’s fear in his voice. Fear and worry and something that feels a lot like the air between them before their first kiss.

Louis moves forward cautiously, stepping to Harry’s bedside. He waves his fingers to clean the blood from Harry’s skin, careful and soft. When Harry takes his hand, he tries not to squeeze too hard.

“I’m going to fix it,” he promises, even though he doesn’t know how. Doesn’t know where to even start.

“I believe you,” Harry says.

Night falls, the sun ducking behind the hills.

 

* * *

 

A week passes, two. Harry is too weak to do little more than sleep, restless with pain and slumped in exhaustion in equal parts. He spends a lot of time staring wistfully out the window, the cool autumn breeze sweeping his curls from his eyes. He’s not meant to be trapped within walls, he’s meant to be out among people, among life and action and different words besides _how do you feel?_ He takes his potion diligently, opium and mint soothing the aches but making him drowsy, dizzy from the opioids swirling through his system.

For the first day, Louis stays on the other side of the room; a watchful guardian, nothing more, wings spread and ready if needs arise for quick action. He still doesn’t want to crowd in where he may not be wanted, doesn’t want to force himself into spaces he doesn’t belong, such as next to Harry, holding his hand tight, loving him so hotly he burns Harry with it. So he stays, diligent and silent, all the way across the room. Until:

Harry inhales deeps as he pulls himself from a drugged sleep, blinking fuzzily. “Lou,” he mumbles, syllables blurry. “Why won’t you sit with me? Have I done something?”

“No,” Louis replies, limbs hurting with the need to go to him. He doesn’t mean to stand, but his legs do anyway without permission from his brain. “Of course not, Harry.”

He doesn’t follow up with a question, just watches Louis unhappily and holds out a shaky arm. “I miss you.”

“I miss you as well,” Louis says. His feet step forward, and again. He tells himself to stop. His self doesn’t listen.

“You can’t fall ill, can you?” Harry asks, pulling his hand back a little. “Is that why you’re…”

“No, no,” Louis huffs a small laugh at Harry’s concern. “You couldn’t get me sick, no. I just wasn’t sure…” He shrugs, ineloquently. “Wasn’t sure if you wanted me here.”

“Louis,” Harry chides, sounding far too much like his mother, except for the racking cough that rakes through him. “Of course I want you here. I want you everywhere.”

He seems to realize what he said and his face goes pink, though he’s still holding his hand out determinedly. Louis takes another step and slides his palm against Harry’s clammy one, the heat of Harry’s skin warming him immediately. He hadn’t realized how cold he’d been without Harry to keep him warm.

He _had_ realized that he missed this, though, simple touches with his best friend, love passed through fingertips and quiet smiles. Harry tugs weakly on his arm and Louis bends, letting Harry lean forward and press their lips together: a _hello_ , a _thank you_ , an _I’ve missed you_. Louis’ wings flutter so hard they knock Gemma’s book off a nearby table, pages flipping wildly, and Harry pulls back with a grin.  

“I’ve got to get those fixed,” Louis complains, his wings twitching in excitement again when Harry laughs.

“No, don’t,” Harry disagrees. “I love them.” He traces a finger along a starburst on Louis’ left wing and Louis shivers, helpless.

When Anne comes to check on them later, Louis is acting as Harry’s pillow, Harry’s sleeping head heavy on his chest. His wings are crumpled awkwardly underneath him but he wouldn’t move for the fate of the world, and Anne doesn’t say a word, though she does smile as she places a tray of food nearby for if Harry feels up to eating at some point.

Louis doesn’t leave Harry’s immediate vicinity very much after that. He doesn’t need food, doesn’t have to sleep for more than a few hours every few weeks; it’s almost perfect, how suited he is to keeping vigil over Harry’s bedside, or it would be perfect if it wasn’t so terrible. He spends the nights holding Harry through his restless sleep, spends days keeping Harry’s mind off the increasing pain in his stomach and chest.

When Louis presses his hand there, the dip of Harry’s abdomen, he feels the cool blackness of the disease working steadily outward, up towards Harry’s heart, back toward Harry’s spine.

And so he doesn’t let himself think about it, and doesn’t let Harry do so either.

“Tell me a story,” Harry requests one afternoon. The breeze off the river has them huddled in Harry’s bed under blankets; Louis offered to close the window, raising his hand in question, but Harry told him he liked the color of the sky that day, and to leave it open, so that’s what he did.

“A story?” Louis muses.

“A proper one,” Harry nods. He nudges his head against Louis’ hand, and Louis runs his fingers through limp, sweaty curls. “I know you’ve got some good ones.”

Louis laughs, and he dredges up something he knows Harry will like. “You know the story of [Phoebe](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.3zdmx3356p6w)?”

Harry’s brow scrunches. “The titan?”

“Yes, that’s her,” Louis nods. “Though I know her as Perrie. She’s a goddess of the moon, so we’re friends.”

“Angel of the night and goddess of the moon,” Harry says wistfully, running light fingers over Louis’ wrists. “Tell me about her.”

So Louis does.

Day in, day out, he talks about the titans and the gods, the legends and the myths. He tells the _real_ stories, not the human-embellished ones, tells about Hercules’ fear of animals and how that made slaying the lion all that more difficult (though fear isn’t quite so heroic, so it was left out of the tales), talks about Pan, and how he was good with the fife but even better with people, funny and personable as if to make people forget what he was, talks about Persephone and how she’s the only demigod that has ever actually struck fear into Louis, sweet face and flower-bound hair hiding a mind cunning and sharp and cutting.

And when he runs out of familiar stories that Anne told Harry as a little boy, Harry tentatively asks about Louis’ own stories instead. About angels, and the heavens, of battles and miracles and humans in far-off places. Louis talks about the nine choirs of angels, from the lowliest guardians all the way up to the Seven Named. He tells Harry the story of the Fall, the advent of sin and the birth of demons. He talks of the great flood that cleansed the Earth; he tells about the giant on the fields outside of Gath (a cousin of Perrie’s, actually), felled by a stone from a slingshot; he tells about a Garden so perfect that humans couldn’t stay, cast out by their own humanity and curiosity.

Sometimes Gemma sits with them, playing a game of marbles or checkers with Harry as Louis talks until he runs out of words. Sometimes her future husband, Cosmas, sits with them when he doesn’t have guard duty, his eyes wide like a child, requesting his favorite stories over and over, so enthusiastic it makes them all laugh. Sometimes Anne does her dyeing work right outside Harry’s open window, so she can hear as well.

Sometimes it almost feels normal.

 

* * *

               

It's a month to the day after Harry collapsed on the riverbank that he wakes with the urge to see the sea.

“You can take me, right, Lou?” he asks, eyes wide and earnest. He's playing it up, Louis knows, but it's working. He itches to give in, would do anything just to see Harry smile (and, to be honest, taking Harry to the beach is a lot simpler than a lot of things he could be asked to do, like pulling down a star for him to hold in his hand, or tearing the side out of a mountain to make a shelter for them to hide away together).

“I can take you to the sea,” Louis agrees cautiously. “But do you think that's a good idea?”

Harry's mouth twists, sadness tilting the corners of his tentative smile. He doesn't argue, and Louis doesn't vocalize his reasons; there's no need. They both understand the situation.

Harry's disease — still unnamed, still dark and cool under Harry's skin like frostbite, like winter-dead plants — has continued creeping through Harry's body, winding blackened tendrils around Harry's organs. He's living off of pain potion and wine now, unable to keep food down for more than a few minutes. His hand grips Louis’ in the night and it's weak, his fingers fragile and thin. The breath in his chest stutters and stalls.

Louis is trying everything he can think of to halt the march of the disease. He summoned Lottie back to Elis to beg her to look for help, to find a spare miracle laying around that no one has claimed. She promised to look, but didn’t promise that she’d be successful. Every few days she reappears, looking contrite and worried.

“This is his story,” she said once. They were in a tableau straight out of a Michelangelo masterpiece (or, perhaps, in fifteen hundred years when Michelangelo starts to paint his masterpieces, a scene like the one they’re in will be his inspiration — again, timelines are tricky in Louis’ head). Harry was sprawled in sleep across the mussed sheets of his bed, Louis keeping him warm now with his arms tangled around Harry’s chest, Lottie perched on the window above them, watching the scene. “And it is his story whether you are a part of it or not. What is meant to be will be.”

“I can’t accept that, Lots,” Louis whispered after a moment. “If there’s something I can do, I have to try.”

“You know our purpose,” she argued quietly. “And you _know_ we’re not meant to interfere with humans unless we’re told to do so. His entire life shouldn’t change just because you found yourself in it.”

_Too late,_ Louis thought to himself. Out loud, he said, “If I have to rip fate apart to keep him alive, then that’s what I’ll do.”  

His sister didn’t argue again, looking lost in thought. It was for the best, anyway; there would be nothing she could say to change his mind. Instead, she touched Louis’ shoulder in farewell, promising that if she found someone, or some _thing,_ that could help Harry, she would let him know.

But they both know it’s not likely. Miracles are locked up tight, in secret rooms among the clouds, human locks and keys nothing compared to the blood sacrifices needed to open those doors.

So Louis branches out. He tracks down Perrie and her family in a seaside cavern, salt clinging to the walls in sparkling sprays. They’re like a group of sirens waiting for mortals to take them up on promises of forever, beautiful, strong women and lithe, gorgeous men, all with Perrie’s distinct gold coloring, watching Louis warily until Perrie embraces him in greeting.

“Louis!” she says brightly, and he hugs her close in return.

“Perrie,” he sighs back. It’s good to see her, it’s been far too long; still, this is the wrong time for pleasantries. “I need your help.”

Perrie promises to visit Harry the next night at midnight when her power is at its greatest — and when Harry sees her, half out of his mind with his pain potion swirling in his veins, he wonders aloud if he’s having a fever dream — but she’s apologetic as she places a delicate hand to his stomach.

“I can ease his sleep,” she says, and does at that exact moment, his skin under her hand pulsing cool blue as Harry’s eyelashes flutter and he drifts back into sleep. “I don’t have anything else for him, though.” She turns to Louis, her eyes sad. “I don’t deal with humans anymore, not since we left Olympus. I’m sorry, Lou.”

So he keeps trying. He goes at night while Harry sleeps: visits a witch in Waladli who boils a pot of herbs and gives the mixture to Louis, telling him to have Harry breathe it in. He finds a shaman in what humans will someday call Siberia, a medical scholar in Rome, a demigod in the Scottish Highlands. They teach him spells and enchantments, words of power and herbs of healing. They give him everything they've got.

Still, Harry worsens.

Helplessness is a wretched feeling, so if Harry asks for something Louis can grant — such as going to the sea — then Louis is going to make that happen.

 

It's a four hour walk from their little spot in Olympia to the mouth of the Alfeiós River where it funnels into the Ιόνιο Sea, and it's a two hour trip by donkey cart. Luckily, Louis doesn't have to bother with either of those methods, instead gathering up Harry in his arms and blinking, hugging Harry close as they instantaneously jump the twenty kilometers to the shoreline.

The wind still has the crispness of autumn but the sun is relentless in its warmth, bright and comforting. Gulls cry overhead, startled by the sudden appearance of two figures on their beach. The water is blue and the blue is everywhere, stretching from the tips of Louis’ toes to the horizon, vast and clear and cool.

Harry takes a deep breath like he’s being revitalized by the surf and the sand, his feet bare, his blanket tucked around his narrow shoulders.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

Louis takes his hand in answer, squeezing just once.

They spend hours there, talking sparsely as the waves roll in. Harry’s curls are windswept back into their former glory, wild and tangled around his face, dried salt and sand flecks of color among the dark strands. The sun does wonders for his pale skin, touching life back into his cheeks.

“I always wanted to be a sailor,” Harry murmurs. The sun is at its zenith, still warm even so far away.

“Did you?” Louis asks, turning to Harry in surprise. “It doesn’t seem like your type of career.”

Harry hums. “Maybe it isn’t. But there’s something about the sea, isn’t there? Something magic.”

“I've never really thought about it,” Louis replies. He was there when this sea was just a crater scooped from the earth, then splashed with saltwater and filled with life; he didn't feel any sort of nostalgia or meaningful thoughts about it before today.

After today, he thinks that'll probably change.

“When my father left for war,” Harry says, scooping up a handful of sand and letting it fall slowly back to the beach, “we stood on the beach and watched the ships until they disappeared. There were hundreds of us, mothers and children and parents and friends, all left behind by the soldiers. I was very young, I don't remember much, but I remember everyone crying, so I cried too. And my mother, she said,” he trails off, pressing a hand to his ribs as he shifts. “She said that my father would always be with me, as long as I stayed near the sea.”

Louis tilts his head. “Do you believe that?”

“I used to,” Harry says. A wave rolls up the sand, sliding over his toes, soaking the edge of his chiton. “It felt like he was with me, when I was here. Like there was a presence I could feel, but not see.” Another handful of sand. “I don't feel it anymore.”

There's a kelpie nest about a kilometer from here, and a colony of kētē just in the next bay, but Louis doubts those are what Anne meant by the spirit of Harry's father being here with him. Maybe she meant the way the rolling waves can sound like a heartbeat, disjointed but loudly, brazenly alive.

The sea, the beach, they crawl with life. Teem with it. Burst with it.

“Here,” Louis says, taking Harry's hand in his once more. “Close your eyes.” Harry obeys, his eyelids lilac in the sunlight. Louis buries their joined hands in the sand, digging his own fingertips into the cooler damp sand under the top layer, so that the back of Harry's hand is pressed to the earth.

Louis sends his consciousness out, nudging at the life hidden around them, crabs hidden in the sand and fish out in the water and gulls overhead, a pack of wild dogs up the beach, a fisherman out in his boat, the kelpies and the kētē, all of it. Then he channels that stream of other consciousnesses and directs it cautiously towards Harry, the brightest spot of life around, even dulled with exhaustion and illness.

It's different doing this with Harry, his human mind so vastly different than what Louis is used to; he doesn't even have to concentrate to reach out and find Lottie, to find his other siblings scattered around the world, Félicté in Assyria, Daisy and Phoebe, ever inseparable, in Cusco. He's never tried connecting to a mortal before, but surely the process is the same.

He nudges at Harry's mind. It feels familiar, like warm days in the sunlight outside Hera’s temple on their favorite bench, like cooled honey slipped into a pocket, like the green of the trees on the sea’s edge.

Louis pushes past the barrier, Harry’s mental protections flimsy and thin compared to immortal minds guarded by thousands of millennia and millions of secrets, and channels the stream of consciousness around them into Harry's mind.

Harry gasps, his eyes flying open.

“What is this?” he asks, bewildered. His eyes are unfocused, catching hazily on things out in the middle distance, probably trying to pinpoint the heartbeats he senses but couldn’t see before with his weak human eyes and ears. Louis blinks into his other Vision so he can see what Harry sees, the pinpricks of light all around them.

“It's life,” Louis answers simply.

“It's beautiful,” Harry whispers. “Is this what it's like for you all the time?”

“I have to be concentrating on it,” Louis answers, “and my senses are better than yours. But otherwise, yes.”

Harry's unfocused gaze swivels, looking overhead to follow a bird across the sky, looking out to sea at a swarm of fish evading the fisherman’s net. In the corner of his eye Louis can see when Harry turns to look at him next, and can hear the way his breath catches.

“You're glowing,” he says, touching the skin of Louis’ wrist like he can't believe it. “Gold.”

“Gold for the armies of Light,” Louis agrees. He doesn’t look back at Harry; he still doesn’t want to see the color of his soul like this, withered and weak.  

Louis slowly pulls the stream back from Harry, not wanting to overwhelm him, and Harry's eyes focus once more.

“Thank you,” Harry whispers again.

“Stop thanking me.”

Harry leans over, presses a light, fleeting kiss to Louis’ shoulder.

“I never, ever will.”

 

* * *

 

One evening, Louis blinks awake from a quick nap and tries to wake Harry as well to give him his nightly dose of potion, and everything suddenly goes from a consistent status quo to terribly, crashingly _wrong_.

“Harry,” he murmurs, yawning. He pats Harry’s arm, his skin cool to the touch, affected by his weak circulation. “Come on, darling. Wake up.”

Harry doesn’t listen, doesn’t react at all. Louis prods him once more, and Harry’s head rolls unnaturally on his neck, flopping sideways.  

Louis, for a moment, goes absolutely still. He refuses to let his mind follow the train of thought that is screaming for attention.

He's so still that, after a moment, he realizes he can hear Harry's heartbeat; faint and irregular, but still alive.

“Gemma!” Louis shouts, sliding out of Harry’s bed and clambering awkwardly to his feet. He paces the length of the room, his wings fluttering in panic behind him. His mind is flying through possibilities, options he’d long discarded unless the situation became critical.

Gemma bursts into the room, her eyes wide. “What? What is it?”

“Try to wake him,” Louis answers tersely. “I- I have to try one more thing.”

He blinks and reappears at the Olympic sanctuary, Hera’s temple deserted in the moonlight.

He shouldn't be here. This is beyond dangerous, it's potentially an act of war, but this is his last option. Nothing else has worked, no one else could help. He wouldn't try this unless the situation was truly, wildly desperate.

“Hera!” Louis shouts up at her temple. “We need to talk!”

She’s not an angel, and gods and goddesses have always had a touch more of the dramatic in them, so her arrival is less a blink into existence and more a cloud-swirling, lightning-filled affair. Hera floats into the entrance of the temple on a puff of pink cloud, face imperious and beautiful and, Louis notes, none too impressed.

“You have nerve, I’ll give you that,” she says, stepping from her cloud, her chiton flowing smoothly around her legs. Her tumbling curls are kept out of her eyes with a tall crown, a simple but effective display of power, pure gold glinting dangerously. “Why do you call me?”

“One of your people is dying,” Louis says, too panicked to worry about formalities, about the wordplay and teasing games Hera and her family love so much. He can’t be anything but blunt, not now. “He’s dying, and I can’t save him.” His voice catches; it’s weakness, but he doesn’t try to hide it. “Save him.”

She studies him for a moment, as if taken aback by the urgency in his tone. “Can’t you do it?”

“No, no it’s- it’s out of my hands, I can’t- Hera, please,” Louis begs.

“I know who it is,” she says, taking a seat in front of her own statue, poised in stone on her throne. She crosses her legs casually, head tilted. “The boy, the human you’ve been using my temple to woo all these months.”

“Yes, that’s-“ Louis says, then stops. Frowns. “I wasn’t wooing him.”

Hera rolls her eyes. “You think I’m oblivious to what happens within my own protective wards?” She lifts a hand and waves, the air between the columns around her temple crackling ominously, pink like the dangerous edge of a lightning bolt. “My husband overlooked your presence here, but I saw you. And you definitely were wooing him.”

It’s not important right now. It’s really, really not.

But.

“Was not.”

Hera tips her head, unimpressed. “I’m the goddess of monogamy and marriage. Do you really think you can fool me, trying to hide your love for him? It’s written all over you.” She sighs, waves her hand again. “The boy, he’s ill, correct?”

“Yes,” Louis says, knees nearly buckling with relief that they’re back on topic. “Harry — sorry, Herakleitos — he’s yours, he’s named for you, he prays to you everyday. Surely you can help him.”

Hera makes a noise that Louis would call a snort, except she’s far too regal for that. “Please,” she scoffs. “He hasn’t been mine in months.”

That’s- that’s not the answer Louis was expecting. “What? He prays to you, he brings you offerings, I watched him do it. He’s yours.”

“He prays, but not to me,” Hera confirms idly. “And the offerings are trinkets laid at my feet, yes, but not given _for_ me.”

“I don’t understand,” Louis says, frustrated.

Hera laughs, high and tinkling. “It’s you, Leilel. The moment you arrived here, you stole his soul. He’s mine no longer.”

“I-“ Louis stammers. Holy blood rushes hot in his ears, making it hard to hear. “That’s- that’s not possible.”

“Perhaps not,” Hera says, inspecting her fingernails. “But the two of us, we do impossible things every day, do we not? So maybe we are quick to judge.”

“But does that matter?” Louis asks desperately. “He was still born to you and given your name, he still _thinks_ he’s yours. Can’t you save him?”

Hera sends him a look so utterly baffled that Louis almost wants to laugh, his insides clenching like the holy blood has gone bad, dark and sluggish in his veins. “You are one of the most powerful creations in the universe,” she says blankly. “You were created long before I was, you’ve seen and done so much more. If you can’t save him,” she asks, her cloud materializing around her feet, thunder rumbling in the distance, “what makes you think I can?”

And then she’s gone.

Along with Louis’ last, distant hope.

 

* * *

 

When Louis returns to Harry’s side, he’s awake, but only just. Sweat mats his hair, and the veins stand out in his arms, his wrists. His breathing is labored, heaving chest pulling in gasps so deep that his spine bends off the bed, back bowed by pain. Anne sits at the top of the bed, Harry's head in her lap, combing limp curls from his eyes. Gemma sits at his feet, her eyes red and teary as she watches her little brother fall apart. Cosmas is in the corner, his usually cheery face drawn and worried. And then there's Lottie, perched above it all once more, watching from the windowsill.

“Louis,” Harry mumbles when Louis reappears at his side. He throws out a hand, squeezing his eyes shut as another wave of pain rolls through him. “Louis, please.”

Louis takes his one thin, fever-warmed hand and squeezes it between both of his own. He holds it to his chest, to the place where his heart would be pounding if he had one, where his sanctified blood rushes and thumps painfully instead, hurting for this boy who should be able to grow into being a man, but who will never make it that far.

“I tried,” Louis chokes out. He aches; no, that's not the right word. This is more than mere soreness, more than a pain that can be overlooked, worked through. This is a pain so deep inside him it's debilitating, like a strand of sharp wire wrapped around his very essence, his lifeforce, tightening with every gasped breath yanked out of Harry. He does so much more than _ache_ — this feels like _dying_.

This feels like Falling; like fire and ash and sulfur.

“Louis,” Harry mumbles, head thrashing in his mother’s lap.

“I tried,” Louis repeats, words cut through by tears that collect in the corners of his eyes. He drops to his knees, brings Harry's hand to his mouth, presses innumerable kisses to his knuckles. He doesn't know if these words are for Harry, in the slightest hope that something will make it through Harry's haze of pain, that maybe he'll hear and understand and, somehow, forgive Louis for his failure. Or maybe these words are for Anne, supplication and a beggar’s plea for forgiveness, for not being able to save her child. For Gemma, for letting her brother be taken from her. Or perhaps for Lottie, maybe in an attempt to prove that, somehow, handing his immortal heart over to fragile human hands was worth it, if only because it was Harry who got to have him, have his heart, for a little while.

Maybe he doesn't have a reason at all to say these things at all, but the words will claw their way out of him if he doesn't let it happen freely anyway.

“I tried and I failed you, _chrysé mou_ ,” Louis whispers. Tears pour and they sting, sting like salt in heavy, horrible wounds. “I spoke to everyone I knew, I tried everything. It wasn't enough.”

Gemma sobs once at that, pressing her hand to her mouth. Cosmas stands and crosses to her, letting her bury her face in his side, tears cutting tracks down his face as well.

Harry doesn't answer, maybe he can't. He might not have even heard; Louis will never know.

Time passes in interminable leaps and drips, and Harry slowly goes quiet, his tired body conquered by pain and disease. His heartbeat thumps like something heavy and labored, a concentrated effort.

At some point, Lottie murmurs, “Louis,” pulling his focus from the bead of sweat that rolls down Harry's temple. He looks up and sees what she sees: the little garden outside Harry's window where she perches, the walled in space where Harry and Louis spent countless days helping Anne with her dye work, teasing and joking and, unbeknownst to either of them, falling in love; in this little space waits a small crowd of immortal beings, watching over the proceedings.

There is Perrie, her moonlight gown glowing gently, a pearlescent crown on her brow. There are Louis’ siblings, worry etched on their faces: Félicité and Daisy and Phoebe, called here by their brother’s anguish sent across the world.

And there is Hera, beautiful and untouchable in her divinity. She inclines her head when Louis meets her gaze, then slowly fades out of sight; hers was a show of support, one that he’ll be expected to return someday. He appreciates the gesture nonetheless.

There's a squeeze of fingers between his, and that recaptures Louis’ attention. Harry's eyes are mere slits, but he is awake, and looking slightly more lucid.

“Are those your sisters?” he asks, voice a mere rasp of syllables against shredded vocal chords.

“Yes,” Louis says, smiling shakily as a tear drops from the tip of his nose. “That's them.”

Harry’s answering smile is an echo of itself, but it’s still something to cling to. “I did always want to meet them,” he says. He shifts slowly, grimacing in pain, and turns to face Louis as fully as he can. His next words are ginger, as though he doesn’t know how Louis will react “You should go with them.”

“No,” Louis says automatically. “I'm not leaving you, not now.”

Harry takes in a deep breath, chest shaking like he’s swallowing swords. “There's nothing you can do here but watch me die,” Harry argues, and it's the most life Louis has heard in his words for the last week. Fervor shines through, a small glimpse of the Harry that Louis met, the Harry that he’s losing.

Louis closes his eyes at the implication of Harry's words. “Then that's what I'll do.”

“Louis,” Harry says, almost chidingly. He coughs, spots of red high on his cheeks. “I know everything about you. I know your memory is perfect, that you'll never forget anything as long as you live.” He coughs again, a wretched sound. “I don't want this to be how you remember me forever.”

“I'm not leaving,” Louis murmurs. “How could you think I would leave you now? I don't care what memories I'm saddled with. They'll be memories of you, that's what's important.”

“No,” Harry argues. “I don't want this.” His words grow louder, more frantic, his sluggish heartbeat picking up. “I don't want this for any of you.”

“Harry,” Louis says, “be careful-”

“If I request it of you,” Harry asks, voice wobbling, “will you go?” He turns to look at his mother this time, his sister. “All of you. Will you go?”

“Harry-” Anne says.

“I don't want to put you through this,” Harry whispers. “Don't you understand? I can't- can’t be what causes you pain, not anymore.”

He doesn't understand, Louis realizes slowly, making eye contact with Gemma as she, too, comes to the same conclusion. Harry thinks that when he's gone, their pain comes to an end. But of course that's not true, of _course_ it’s not; Louis is in unimaginable amounts of pain right now, watching his love suffer endlessly. But when he's gone, when the world is bereft of Herakleitos, the pain will compound into something new and so, so much worse.

But they can't tell him that. Harry can't- he can't die knowing that he's leaving his loved ones in heart-wrenching, earth-shattering grief, not when he’s already had to see the effect his illness has had on them so far.

“I can't make myself leave you here,” Louis whispers. “Don’t make me go.”

Harry's lip trembles. “Don't make me watch you stay.”

That’s the spear that shatters the shield, that’s the drop of water that breaks the dam. Louis sobs, tears coursing down his cheeks. He wonders if this is how humans feel while drowning, gasping to pull in the hope of a little more air, just a little more, just to survive another few seconds.

At this rate, Louis doesn’t think he’ll make it to the surface.

He takes a deep breath — can’t breathe, drowning, but he doesn’t _need_ air, right? He doesn’t even have lungs, doesn’t need oxygen, but then if that’s true why does it feel like his ribcage is caving in? He burns, his throat aches, his eyes sting, he can’t make it stop, make it stop, make it _stop_ — and says the worst three words ever uttered.

“Okay,” he says. The word breaks like a wave against a rock. “I’ll go.”

Harry’s head falls back into his mother’s lap like a string has been cut, tears streaming in waves. He’d asked for it, but he hadn’t actually wanted it; Louis feels the little selfish root in the tears, wanting Louis at his side until the very end, but sending him away because, once more, he’s trying to save others in place of himself.

“I’ll go,” Louis repeats, still gripping Harry’s hand as tightly as he dares. “But I need you to promise me something first.”

Harry turns his head to the side to look at Louis again; his lip trembles like it hurts to look. Louis knows it definitely hurts on his end. “Anything, Lou,” he mumbles throatily.

“Don’t spend-“ Louis starts, but then has to close his eyes, breathe in through his nose, try again. “Don’t spend your last bit of time dwelling on the sadness.” He reaches out and traces the bow of Harry’s lips, red-bitten and raw, pulled down in anguish when they should always be smiling. “Think of good things,” Louis begs. “Let yourself feel happiness. Or if not happiness, at least not regret.”

“I second that,” Anne adds quietly, her own tears silent. She runs her hand through Harry’s curls again.

“I’ll think of you,” Harry promises. He’s red-eyed and debilitatingly thin and shaking like a vase in an earthquake, he’s sweat-drenched and pale and lank-curled, but he’s the most beautiful sight in Louis’ long, long life. “I’ll think of our temple, and I’ll think of the sea, and I’ll think of you.”

_Our temple,_ he says, and Hera was right — Harry is Louis’, fully and wholly Louis’, and Louis didn’t even know. _Our temple_ ; it rocks him to the core.

“I love you, _chrysé mou_ ,” Louis whispers fiercely, gathering Harry’s hand in both of his once more and pressing Harry’s knuckles back to his lips. “I love you more than I thought was possible.”

“I love you,” Harry replies, shaky but sure. “You make all of this worth it.”

Louis leans down and presses their lips together. Salt mixes with the taste of Harry, cooled honey and warm wind, and Louis drinks it in like manna. He can’t imagine this being their last kiss, but that’s what it must be; he’s not going to deny Harry his dying wish. He’s never going to deny Harry anything ever again.

“Go,” Harry says, voice strangled and choked with tears. “Go, and go with my love.”

Louis’ sisters are suddenly there, all around him, propping him up and urging him away. Harry looks small in his bed when Louis looks back at him, frail and fragile, tears coursing down his cheeks.

Louis throws his head back and wails, anguish pulling at every atom of his being, and then Lottie tugs his arm and they’re gone.

 

* * *

 

Louis’ sisters take him as far from Greece as possible, settling on the tundra thousands of miles north of the edges of the Roman empire. There’s nothing here to break Louis’ heart, or whatever he has instead of a heart — angelic glory and enough pain to fell a titan, he’d think — just ice and snow and whiteness, blankness.

Félicité conjures up some heavy cloaks and Daisy lights a fire with the snap of her fingers. They don’t get cold but it’s nice to pretend, to huddle together as though body heat and the little fire is all that will keep them alive tonight, here on the expanses of the edges of the world.

Hours pass in silence; Louis thinks the twins doze off for a while, but Lottie and Félicité are still awake, resolute on either side of him, their arms woven through his.

Morning breaks in a place where no human has yet stood.

And Louis sees none of it, mind preoccupied with the thoughts of who he left behind.

 

* * *

     

_Vyadhapura, Kingdom of Funan, (present day Cambodia) | AD 42_

Lacking anything else to do, or anywhere else to go, Louis follows Lottie to Vyadhapura, where small settlements of city-states are building up into an equally small kingdom. This time, unlike in Elis, he stays invisible to the humans around them, and he and Lottie watch in silence from on top of the thatched roof of a hut as elders meet and discuss the building of a temple. The mens' guardian angels watch from nearby, sometimes flickering curious glances at Louis and Lottie, but well-trained enough not to ask any questions.  

It’s still morning of the same long, never-ending day, sun bright in the sky, when something in Louis’ chest clenches. It’s not possible for him to be sure, but somehow, he still knows.

Harry’s gone.

 

* * *

 

_Eblana, Iouernia (present day Dublin) | AD 101_

Louis wanders.

He checks in with his sisters from time to time. He’s there with Lottie as Judea falls to Rome, he joins Félicité in Teotihuacán as new pyramids are dedicated to deities and rulers, he spends a few years with Daisy and Phoebe watching the Romans build the baths at Aquae Sulis. He never stays long — not long for angels, at least — and never tells them where he’s going next. He sees the concerned looks, hears his their murmured worries when they think he’s not listening.

He doesn’t mind. It makes them feel better to fret over him, and he appreciates that (in theory, if not in practice).

That doesn’t mean he’s going to acquiesce to their demands to stay present, to stay visible. He just can’t do it; decades fly out from underneath him, years passing without his notice. He can’t pull himself back into the present — it just doesn’t interest him anymore.

He doesn’t think of Harry, if he can help it. Hot hurt has dulled over the decades, cooled into an icy ache somewhere near his spine. He thought maybe that would be easier, the numbing of it all, but he’s not sure if it’s done anything at all, actually. It’s not any easier to bear a heavy, cold weight than it was to live with the hot ball of regret in his stomach.

Nothing is easy, not anymore.

He’s settled on an island, green like nothing he’s seen before, to while away a few years until he gets bored and tries somewhere new. There are humans here; Louis doesn’t speak to them, doesn’t make himself visible, in his true Form or his human disguise, either one. He knows there won’t be another Harry out here, he was too unique for that, but there might be someone else that worms their way into Louis’ life.

Louis can’t let that happen again. He’s borne the brunt of humanity’s fragility once, he can’t do it again.

So he stays hidden.

Eblana, the settlement is called, or at least that’s what Louis’ mind makes of the syllables the locals say. Their language is interesting, a far cry from the harsh, hard edges of Latin, different from the rolling, rhythmic Greek Louis lived with for a year. It fits them, though, these hardy people who claim they came from the sea, cheerful and red-cheeked and bright.

“ _[Dia dhuit](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.omoxgr7tykvy)_ _,_ _”_ says one of the locals right next to Louis’ ear. He doesn’t react, knowing they can’t be talking to him; he’s still invisible to any mortal, and if they approach where he’s sitting they’ll get the inexplicable urge to move somewhere else instead so he won’t be bothered. He’s perched on the edge of the freshwater well in the center of the village, right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of daily human life. He’s sure the person speaking is probably just greeting someone else.

He can’t interact with them, with humans, won’t let himself, but he still likes to be in the middle of it all. It’s his one allowance to himself. He just won’t get attached to any of them, that’s all.

“Oi, are ye deaf?” the person says next to Louis. A pale hand snaps in front of Louis’ face. “ _Heiloooo_.”

Louis turns, irritated, to find someone looking right at him. It’s so unexpected that he curses, the Greek curse Harry taught him slipping out without thought, “ _[μὰ τὸν Δία](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.5ggziva3lzmw)_!”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” the man grins, eyes wide in interest. “Not from around here, are ye?”

“How can you see me?” Louis demands, then coughs. He hasn’t spoken in… well. It’s been a few years since he’s seen his sisters, and he doesn’t bother with anyone else. He’s a little rusty. “Can everyone else see me?” He sends a little flare of energy from his fingertips at a woman hanging her laundry from a tree nearby, the energy nudging her like an insistent breeze. She swats at it like it’s an insect, but doesn’t turn around. “Can you hear me?”

“Think it’s just me, mate,” the man says. “Not to worry.”

Louis furrows his brow, then blinks into his Vision. The man is formed like a regular human, bones and muscles and sinews and tissues, but his blood is… different. It looks oily, luminescent and strange. Otherworldly.

The cheerful smile hasn’t left the man’s face, though Louis has the oddest feeling the man knows exactly what Louis was just doing. “Call me Niall.”

Louis could disappear in the blink of an eye, could go anywhere else in the world and not have to deal with another living creature. He could do that. But… something in him doesn’t want to. “I’m Louis,” he says carefully.  

“ _[Tá áthas orm buaileadh leat](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.20llkji07e8r)_ , Louis,” Niall says, dipping his head again. “Fancy a walk?”

“A walk to where?” Louis asks, but he automatically matches Niall step for step as he turns, leading Louis out of the village on the main path.

“Around,” Niall says airily. “How long’ve you been in Dublin?”

“Dublin?” Louis asks.

“Oh, right. S’not the official name, yet, but it will be,” Niall says, winking as he points at the tiny settlement back over his shoulder. “We’re working on making it catch on.”

“How do you-“ Louis starts, then cuts himself off, frustrated. “Who _are_ you?”

“We’ve met before,” Niall says. He sticks his hands in the pockets of his léine, shuffling his boots a little as he walks. For a moment he’s so reminiscent of Harry in his chiton, thin legs bare from the knees down, slim and lithe with his cloak draped around his shoulders, that Louis’ stomach twists. “I recognized you. I was still going by [Aengus](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.c6yxhki6l4kh), back then.”

“Aengus,” Louis repeats slowly, then it clicks. (It’s like Harry said — he never forgets anything. A blessing and a truly unbearable curse.) “Oh, _Aengus_ , I remember,” Louis says. “You’re one of the Tuatha!”

Niall nods. “One and the same.” He looks askance at Louis. “You weren’t going by Louis, then, either.”

“Yes, well,” Louis hems, kicking a pebble on the road in front of him. “A lot of things can change in a millennium.”

Niall laughs quietly. “True.” He whistles for a moment, a trilling sound that a bird somewhere in the trees echoes. “I don’t know if you’re looking for company, but there’s always room in the Court,” he offers, still looking away as though he knows Louis couldn’t stand it if he was watching him right now. “You’ve met me mate Bressie, haven’t ye? He’d be delighted to see you.”

Louis has met [Bres](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.htit2e9v7vsi), a giant, cheerful half-god who charms everyone in his sight. He always kept a lively Court, even a thousand years ago; Louis remembers spirits pulled from the ground so potent that even he was affected, days spent with a dizzy mind and a blurred vision and so much laughter and joy he didn’t know what to do with himself. At another time he might’ve wanted that. He doesn’t now.

“Or,” Niall offers easily, still looking the other way. “I’ve got me own place, up near Maelblatha. Don’t spend a lot of time there, but it’s quiet. If you’re wanting to talk, or something.”

Louis doesn’t want to _talk._ Louis doesn’t want to spill his feelings out to someone with objectivity who can take a new look at a situation he’s been trapped in for over half a century now. He doesn’t want _help,_ or _affection,_ or a _friend._ He wants… he wants…

“Oh,” Louis says, surprising himself. “Yeah, I… I would like to talk.”

Niall takes Louis’ arm and twists, turning on the spot. Time and space squeeze around them and suddenly, they’re somewhere new.

“Home,” Niall says, sweeping his hand out wide over what is little more than a rolling green pasture. Nearby is the edge of a forest, tall greenery arching high overhead. Niall leads the way to a well-beaten path between the trees, dirt soft under his boots, the silence echoing back bird calls and wind in the leaves.

“Maelblatha?” Louis asks, stepping delicately over a small flowering shrub.

“Aye,” Niall says. “Though I’m thinking of changing it. Was thinking something like…” They step out of the trees and into a glen, serene and soft-lit with afternoon sun. In the center of the glen sits what can only be described as a miniature castle, gray stone ivy-covered like it’s being reclaimed by the woods. “Mullingar.”

 

* * *

 

Niall doesn't rush Louis into a heart-to-(metaphorical)heart as soon as they settle into his home. Which is good, because immortals are set in their ways and Louis has been set in his since before the cosmos were a twinkle in the sky. And since the last person he opened up to broke his heart by, well, _dying_ , he's not particularly eager to open himself up again.

A few days pass. Then a week. Then another.  

Most of the time, Louis doesn’t have the energy for exploring and adventuring the way he used to, back with- back in Elis.

Sometimes he and Niall spend hours in front of the fireplace in Niall’s ancient home, drinking cool wine and watching the flames in the fireplace flicker, Niall following Louis’ lead on conversations. The castle is expansive, hidden away from eyes not meant to see — “Faerie magic,” Niall shrugs when Louis asks how that happened — and homey, worn quilts and generous furs piled onto every soft surface, like Niall is a bear nesting for the winter.

“Sorry for being a bad guest,” Louis murmurs one night over dinner, he and Niall alone at the long table in the formal dining room. “Haven’t been around others in… a while.”

“Not a problem,” Niall says, and he looks like he means it. “It’s just nice to have someone here. Can get a bit lonely, rattling around this old place by myself.”

On the third day he’s there, Louis discovers Niall’s library, and he decides then and there he might not ever leave. Books on every imaginable subject — and some unimaginable ones — line the shelves, from angels to dragons to werewolves to silly, wonderful humans, and the smell of old, ancient magic blends with the dry-dust smell of worn scrolls in a way that makes Louis’ stomach flip with happiness. When he starts getting that achey, hollow feeling in the pit of his chest like he does when he’s trying not to think about Harry, he digs through the carefully maintained scrolls and finds everything he can on angelology, going through with a quill and snickering at all the wrong information, pulling himself hand over fist out of that horrible slump of sudden sadness.

But there are some days Louis _doesn’t_ feel like finding a hole to burrow into until the apocalypse rains down. On those days he lets Niall drag him around the countryside. He’s pulled along from the little patch of dirt of what-will-someday-be-Mullingar to the happy little hamlet of what-will-someday-be-Dublin. Up rolling hills and across dale and fen, under cool morning sky and warm evening rays. Niall catches Louis up on the fates of the other [Tuatha](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.ej30icnz0uam), his demigod family who nearly rivals Hera and her brood for ridiculous intertwined stories and using humans to bait each other into war.

 

“Me [mam](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.9d1sixgl83df) created this river,” Niall says one day as they approach a gentle swath of blue cutting through the landscape, soft currents swirling foam around smoothly polished stones. “Lost her life to creating it, in the end.” He bends and trails his finger through the water. “She's still here, though. I feel her.”

He says it so nonchalantly that, for a second, Louis is envious. How long ago did Niall’s pain leave him, he wonders, _and how long do I have to wait until I get to that point?_ Will he ever be able to stand at the edge of the sea and not think of the blue of Harry's veins under his skin? Will he be able to smell briny air, hear the rush of waves and the crash of surf, and not remember the navy-purple of bruises on Harry's delicate body, the smell of his hair, the curve of his laugh caught in a periwinkle morning?

But he looks again: Niall's face is peaceful, but not painless. He hides depth, not unlike this river, and Louis adjusts his train of thought. Thinks that maybe Niall's pain didn't leave, it just softened into something more bearable.

Thinks maybe all he wants is the same thing.

“Harry loves the water,” he hears himself say, taking a seat at the river’s edge, unlacing his boots and dipping his feet in. Niall doesn't freeze or flinch, doesn’t whip his head around to stare, nothing so obvious. He does slowly pull his hand from the cool current and take a seat next to Louis, though.

“Harry?” he asks easily. It's not even a prod for information, Louis can tell. If he was to say _no one, forget it_ , Niall would shrug and let him be.

But he doesn't want to say that. It bubbles inside him; he _wants_ to talk about it. About _him_. About his Harry. Wants to share him with someone new, someone who doesn’t already have summer-tinged memories of Harry and who can fall in love with him tangentially through Louis.

“His name is Herakleitos,” Louis tells Niall. Stops, corrects himself. Ignores the break in his own voice. “ _Was_. Was Herakleitos.” Another deep breath, a smile as he watches water carve around the stone in its path. “And I love him.”

And so he talks. He tells their story: a minuscule year in the eternity of Louis’ life, but a year that changed him irrevocably. He tells Niall things that even his sisters don't know, little things like the golden-green of Harry's eyes first thing in the morning. The way he listened as though Louis’ voice was the only thing worth hearing. The birthmark on his knee. The hiccups he got after two goblets of wine. The love he had for everyone, even those who didn’t deserve it.

He talks about watching Harry fall apart in front of him. About how he'd stayed distant from humans for millennia, but one look at Harry and he'd fallen, fallen hard, and then Harry was gone before he even knew what that meant or how to deal with it. About still loving him so much it hurts in the corners of his mind, in the pads of his fingers, his love etched in his very God-carved bones.

He talks and the sun falls into night; he talks and the sun rises again on the other side of the sky. He talks and Niall listens, until Louis runs out of words and the morning is blue above them.

“I'd like to tell you a story,” Niall says when Louis finishes. He laces his fingers around his knee, drawn up to his chest. He's a thousand years old but he looks young here next to his mother’s river, sweet-faced and quiet.

“I loved a girl, once,” he says. “She was mortal, and her name was Caer. And I miss her every day I still breathe.”

“Tell me about her,” Louis urges, nudging Niall’s shoulder with his own. Niall grins, chin tucked against his chest.

“Too smart for her own good,” Niall says, fondness leaking out of him from the corner of his crooked smile. “Brighter than the sun, she was, and more beautiful than anything I've seen on this earth, then or now.” He ruffles his hair, sighing. “She was taken from me, and I spent years looking for her. Begging for help, begging for anyone with news. I found her, got her back. We were happy. And then years passed and she was just… gone,” he murmurs. “Forever. Just like that.”

_Just like that_ is a pretty accurate descriptor, or it could be if it involved a bit more screaming and crying and hopeless, helpless yearning. Like the snap of fingers, sudden and violent; a crack, then gone.

“Immortals aren't built to love mortals, I know that now,” Niall says. He kicks his feet, a drop of river water lands on Louis, “but that we're capable of it means that we couldn't have avoided it. You with your Harry, me with my Caer. They're part of us, like we were part of them.”

“You think we were _meant_ to bear this?” Louis asks, touching the place in the center of his chest that still aches the most.

“I think we _do_ bear it,” Niall murmurs. He leans back on his elbows; a brazen god in his glory, chestnut hair ruffling in the breeze, toes cooling in the river. “I think we know, whether we admit it to ourselves or not, that humans are temporary. We’re selfish, in that way — they’re only a segment of our lives, but we consume all of theirs. And then they’re gone and we deal with the aftermath of that selfishness.” 

“I miss him,” Louis whispers.

“That doesn’t go away,” Niall says. He shifts, looks up at Louis with empathy in his eyes. “But it does lessen. Eventually.”

The River Boyne splashes around their feet, the wind rustles through the trees. The world turns, and two immortals survive.   

 

* * *

 

Most of what is considered humanity, ironically enough, did not originate with humans.

Humanity is a conglomeration of virtues and vices stolen from angels and demons, morals taken from deities and messages infused into them by monsters. Humans were created and then let loose as blank, identity-less creatures, and then within a single lifetime they defined what it meant to _be_ a human: cruel and dangerous and loving and kind and careful and reckless and _new_.

When Louis was still Above, he and his sisters and the rest of Angelkind watching these bumbling, incredible creatures grow and learn and start to decide things for themselves, they were told that humans would learn from them.

“They will take from us Goodness,” said Uriel, voice like trumpets and thunder and terror. “And they will take from demons Evil. It is our Purpose,” he stopped, wings flaring wide, sword glowing on his back, “ _your_ Purpose, to guide them to the Light. Let them follow in your path. Let them not be tempted by sin.”

And Louis believed it. He believed that he was only capable of good things, and that demons were only capable of bad. It made sense, then, that humans could be swayed by either, and that he, being an angel, should love them and show them the way.

But then humankind grew. Evolved. Spread across the available lands, and grew interested in their own affairs. And so angels couldn’t guide from afar anymore, but were sent to Earth instead. And that was fine at first. Like getting to watch a show from the front row. Louis wasn’t meant to interact with them, so he didn’t.

But he _did_ still hear their questions.

And, funny enough, they brought up good points.

Surely, they asked, and the question rattled in his mind, surely lust is not _always_ a sin? Surely it is welcome between a man and his wife, surely it is _good_ between a couple bound by law and love? And surely, they asked, envy is only natural? That it leads humans to aspire to their best, to reach to their highest potential to match those they envy? Surely pride is just a person’s confidence in themselves? Surely wrath has its place: in war, in justice?

Louis didn’t dare voice the questions himself, all too aware of the line he would be toeing. He remembered Morningstar, he remembered the Great Fall; he was there when Lucifer closed his green eyes and opened them black. He wouldn’t dissent.

But he wondered.

 

* * *

 

_Maelblatha, Iouernia (present day Mullingar) | AD 120_

It takes years, but Louis gets better.

Not okay, never really okay. He still carries Harry like a talisman, his fragile fingerprints branded onto Louis’ skin. But Niall says that’s normal, or at least as normal as could possibly be when immortal falls in love with mortal.

Louis reports to Michael for orders for the first time in over fifty years. He visits his sisters regularly, checks in with Niall every once in a while. He works, he laughs, he protects, he guides. He misses Harry with every fiber of his being. He lets himself feel that, wrapped in memories of sweet honey smiles and hemlock curls.

He doesn't move on. He learns from Niall that it's too late for that; Harry is indelibly part of him, inked into his veins like some sort of contract. Harry is the soul that Louis never had, and lives on inside of him. Even gone, he guides Louis.  

But Louis remembers, and even on his worst days he's appreciative of the year they had together.

He lives. And for that, he thinks Harry would be pleased.

 

* * *

 

_Pompeii, Campagna (present day Italy) | AD 79_

For the first thirty years after Harry, Louis doesn’t dream.

Maybe that’s not true. Maybe he _chooses_ not to dream.

Or maybe he sees the same things in his dreams that he does when he’s awake, so he doesn’t bother staying in one place long enough to do it. His body doesn’t need more than a little bit of sleep, a few hours of rest a month, at most, but when he doesn’t get that minimal amount his body reacts by slumping him into unconsciousness at the first possible moment.  

That moment comes in Campagna.

He dreams of pale, long-fingered hands. Of a dimpled smile. Of a jeweled pin clipped into curly hair.

But more than that, he dreams that there was no disease. That Harry lived, lived a good, long human life. He became old and wise, white-haired with age. He had a dozen children and a hundred grandchildren, and the city of Elis adored him as a statesman as much as it adored him as a wild-haired teen. And Louis was there, still Harry’s friend, still enraptured with the curve of his lips and the sound of his laugh, but he — in this dream, at least — could share, could let Harry have the future he deserved with a harmless, blank-faced woman who loved him endlessly.

Louis startles awake, yanked to consciousness by the ground rumbling, by screaming in the streets.

He runs to the window just in time to see [Vesuvius](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.5saw9zb9eq3w) blow.

 

* * *

 

_Maelblatha, Iouernia, (present day Mullingar) | AD 125_

Louis, rationally, knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s sent back to Greece.

The world doesn’t revolve around the Roman Empire, but there’s more political scheming and warmongering and general _humanity_ in one square kilometer anywhere in the Empire than there is in the entirety of other civilizations, and so angels and demons alike flock there to attempt to control (or, in the case of demons, to subjugate and ruin and terrify) the region like the most highly revered piece on a chessboard of the world.

“Leilel,” Michael calls, and Louis squints up at the bright sunshine. He can’t see Michael — he tends to stay Above, away from it all — but he feels strange not acknowledging being summoned. “You are needed in Greece. [Hadrian](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.9ouojma2r8d7) has reached Athens, and he journeys to Olympia from there. A plot has arisen to assassinate him. You will not let that happen.”

Louis’ stomach turns.

“Do you understand?” Michael rumbles.

Louis, frustrated by the nausea pooling inside him, snaps, “Stop the bad guys, got it,” then sticks a sarcastic thumbs up towards the sky. Michael won’t notice — he still tends to talk in Thees and Thous, he’s not going to catch a bit of sarcasm.

(Hell, Louis didn’t even understand sarcasm until he’d spent enough time around Harry to catch the upward lilt of a joke when he’d say _lovely weather today_ as he shook rain from his curls. He likes it now, though. Has somewhat stolen it for his own use.)

(Harry wouldn’t mind.)

The direct sunlight beaming down on Louis from Michael’s attention fades back out into the typical green-tinged summer day he was previously experiencing. A breeze stirs at the hair on the back of his neck.

“Oi,” Niall says nearby. “D’you say something?”

“Not to you,” Louis answers, stretching out his toes. He doesn’t particularly want to move, if he’s being honest; the sun has sapped his energy, and Niall had his harp out earlier, the soothing tones light and sweet in Louis’ ear. And, of course, the nausea still weighing heavily in his stomach doesn’t help either. “That was Michael.”

“Ah,” Niall says in understanding, flicking a glance up at the clouds sliding by overhead, cutting the rays into patches across the pastures. Archangels make Niall uneasy, Louis has learned, but he’ll put up with them if the jobs they pass to Louis keep him working and preoccupied. “What’s he want, then?”

“Trouble in Greece,” Louis says.

“Greece?” Niall repeats doubtfully.

“Olympia, specifically,” Louis admits.

“ _[Cac](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.9xm6s7xdscci)_ ,” Niall curses. “You going to be alright?”

It’s probably an entirely different world there. Eighty years since Harry, entire generations have come and gone since then. The streets will have been updated, the stalls in the marketplace run by new people. Anne’s house is probably occupied by someone else.

It won’t be familiar, Louis thinks. No, he’s sure. He’ll be fine, because it won’t be the same at all.

 

* * *

 

_Elis, Greece | AD 125_

It’s exactly the same.

The streets are crowded, as the party began long before the emperor ever arrived, but even with the flags and banners hanging from the windows of the tallest buildings, even with the blinding shine of the metal of countless soldier helmets and saddles and boots, even with the wine flowing so heavily that it runs in the street like rainwater, deep purple and cutting thickly through the dust and dirt of the road.

Even with all that, it still feels exactly like the world Louis left behind.

The crush of humanity is almost overwhelming, especially as Louis lets it carry him forward, towards the teeming crowds in the center of town. Towards the Olympic sanctuary, though he’s trying not to think about that. The great gate is already visible in the distance; he closes his eyes.

The job. Think about the job, think about finding the human with murder in their heart. Think about dispatching them and sending in a few lower angels to clean up the mess.

Right.

The throng around Louis pulses with life, their souls — silver and gold alike — bright and blinding from the celebrations. He sends his consciousness sweeping outward, over the thousands of bodies, searching out the one not thinking about wine or song or feasts. Assassins in the line of duty don’t have time for distractions; they should stand out as the one dull spot in the masses of shine.

When Louis finds it, he gasps aloud.

It’s not the sharp silver of an assassin’s soul, it’s black. Black and gaping, a person-shaped black hole here in the middle of a living, carefree crowd.

A demon.

Louis’ eyes snap open; he doesn’t know if Michael knew this was a demon plot from the beginning, or if he thought it was a routine human grab for power, but Louis feels wildly unprepared. This isn’t his usual thing; this isn’t a normal job at all. He could concentrate his energy and level this pavilion and the demon with it, but if his last — and only — interaction with humans is something to go by, he’d never be able to live with himself causing those type of casualties.

No, he’ll… he’ll just have to extract the demon somehow. Lure it away from the people; if it’s here for Hadrian, it’ll be at least a day before the emperor arrives. It’ll come willingly with no target to murder yet, right? Louis will just have to make that happen. Somehow.

Right.

Louis opens his eyes and blinks into his Vision, the outline of every human going silver or gold, their souls glowing in their chests. The blackness keeps drawing his eyes up ahead but he and the demon are still separated by hundreds of people, so he concentrates on slipping through the crowd instead, light-footed and cautious. The black spot settles in a spot at the bottom of the huge staircase leading up to the Propylon, and Louis tries not to think about the horrifically ironic scenario that has led to him tracing a demon to the spot where he first laid eyes on Harry eighty years ago.

Closer, closer Louis creeps. The black spot is still standing in one place, the demon stopping to survey the crowds, perhaps, or to wait out the hours until the emperor actually arrives. Louis doesn’t know, he doesn’t care, he’s never actually dealt with a demon entirely on his own before but he knows they’re filled with fire and sin, danger and death. He’ll want to take this one down quickly, and then to get out of Elis before the sharp-edged nostalgia melts him into a puddle.

Closer. There’s an empty space in the crowd and Louis slides into it. His fingers are fluttering at his sides, an outlet for the stress pumping through him since he can’t unfurl his wings. A huddle of gossiping men and women slowly shift out of the way, Louis is about to pinpoint the demon for the first time —

“Look out!” a voice cries, and Louis wrenches himself backwards just in time to avoid being trampled by a runaway chariot, the soldier who it belongs to lying supine in the dirt as though he’d toppled right out of the basket, wine-drunk and wide-eyed. The horses kick up a cloud of dust as they wheel about, panicked in the midst of all these people screaming and shouting as though that will do anything.

Louis blinks out of his Vision just in time to see one of the horses rear, kicking violently, ready to come down on a child who has stumbled too close. Louis directs a sharp wind at the girl and she topples backward, the horse’s hooves landing where her precious head had been just a second before. A man leaps out of the crowd and grabs one of the horse’s reins, then another grabs the reins on the other side, and soon the embarrassed soldier has his animals back under control and out of the vicinity.

Louis lets out a relieved breath and then, like being hit with a sudden icy chill, remembers what he had been doing.

He turns back to the Propylon, eyes scanning quickly for the black spot among the gold and silver.

Instead of black, he sees white: tiny white blossoms braided into wild brown curls.

He doubles over, shocked.

_Is_ this _what it feels like to have a heart?_ he wonders deliriously, clutching at his chest. There’s nothing there, no muscle or organ or aortas or regular red blood under his hand, but still something thunders like drumbeats, still something pounds like footsteps in a marching line. He squeezes his eyes shut, and he tries to forget what he’s seen.

Because that wasn’t Harry. That _wasn’t Harry;_ Harry’s dead. He’s dead, he died and Louis sees him everywhere so of course he’d see him _here,_ amongst familiar statues and on familiar cobbled streets where the wind smells like his dreams.

But, _hell,_ how he wants it to be Harry. For a moment, that singular thought is all that’s in his head: _I wish it was him._

He stands, still clutching his chest.

He exhales.

He opens his eyes.

Green eyes stare back.

“Louis?” Harry says. There are still dozens of people between them, and yet Louis hears his own name as easily as if Harry had whispered it in his ear.

“Harry,” Louis breathes.

It’s not possible. It’s not- _fuck,_ his limbs feel bubbly and strange, unreal. There’s no way, this can’t. It’s not _possible,_ how… _how?_ His body doesn’t feel like a body anymore, it feels like bees in the shape of an angel pretending to be a human, buzzing and frenetic. He must have- he must have survived, somehow, must have found a way to beat back the illness in his veins and he must have pulled through. Louis left too early — following Harry’s pleas, _not his fault,_ but he still left — and Harry pulled through. He’s alive, he’s.

_Alive._

It’s not eighty years ago but it could be, Louis rooted in shock to this bit of road as a beautiful boy with poison flowers in his hair walk his way. Harry looks as though he can’t quite believe this is happening; _Louis_ can’t quite believe this is happening, either.

His hair’s longer, swept back off his forehead. His jaw is sharper, his neck wider. He’s gotten taller; but that just makes sense, Louis supposes. He was seventeen last time Louis saw him, he’s bound to grow a little in eighty-

“Louis,” Harry says again when they’re face to face. His eyes flicker over Louis’ face like he’s absorbing every detail. Louis understands; he’s doing the same thing.

“You’re here, you’re.” Louis takes in a shuddering breath, even though he doesn’t need it. “All this time I thought you were. But you weren’t, you were.” He can’t finish a sentence, can’t get the words out; _alive_ and _dead_ and _gone_ and _back_ seem so much bigger now, like those little words are giant concepts his eternal mind can’t wrap around.

“I’m here,” Harry says, answering the most obvious of Louis’ not-questions.

“You’re here,” Louis repeats dumbly. The not-heart in his chest is still beating wildly. There’s a not-smile on Harry’s face, as though he’s too wary to make it happen in full. There’s a lot of not-talking and not-grinning and not-celebrating for a moment as they just stare at each other.

Then the wind shifts, and Louis’ holy blood rushes for an entirely different reason.

“Sulfur,” he spits, eyes flashing, and he takes Harry’s hand. It’s hot against his palm, wider, longer-fingered, but still familiar like a favorite blanket. “C’mon, we’ll talk somewhere else. There’s a demon around.”

“I know,” Harry says but Louis barely catches that, his senses on high alert; the blackness is pulling at him and it’s close, the demon circling somewhere nearby. Louis tries to pull Harry forward and Harry tugs back.

“We don’t have time for this,” Louis whispers fiercely, still scanning the crowd around them even though he wants nothing more to just stand here in this exact spot and stare at Harry for a century or two. They can do that later; right now, he has to get Harry away from the demon. He tugs again, this time using a little bit of his real strength. Harry still doesn’t budge.

And that, for the first time, registers as odd in Louis’ mind. He turns back.

Harry smiles, a real smile, not a not-smile, but there’s something there that looks a little like guilt and a little like anxiety. He blinks, and his eyes go black, black, black.

“I think we should talk.”

 

* * *

 

Harry, still holding Louis’ hand, drags him out of the crush of people around them, all of them still reveling and drinking and cheering as though the entire planet didn’t tip sideways on its axis when Harry’s eyes went black.

Black. Black like hell, black like _sin,_ and as Louis stumbles along behind him he realizes he truly is the star being pulled into the inescapable clutches of a black hole. The rational part of his mind is screaming, telling him to rip his hand away, to disappear, to call for backup, to dig up some holy water and douse this _thing_ until it tells him what’s really going on.

But.

But it’s _Harry._ It’s Harry holding his hand, it’s Harry glancing back at him, his front two teeth biting nervously at his lip as though he expects Louis to actually run.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says at one point, still pulling Louis along like a child with a doll. Louis almost laughs, because there’s no way that’s true, there’s no way for him to know the chaos of Louis’ clawing, desperate _happiness_ colliding with the basic instinct to get himself away from here. Or… or maybe he does understand, and that’s why he looks the way Louis feels: like he wants to simultaneously tie himself to Louis with the strongest ropes on the planet and also run in the opposite direction until a clear answer appears to him or he hits a sea, whichever first. “But please, please just let me explain.” Then he shakes his head. “Or explain parts of it, at least.” Another shake of his head. “Maybe.”

Louis doesn’t answer, but not tugging his hand out of Harry’s must be enough because they keep moving, snaking their way through the back alleys of Olympia. When Louis sees their destination, though, he stops short.

“Louis,” Harry urges.

“No,” Louis says, then makes a terrible, choked-off sound that was meant to be a laugh. He stares at Anne’s house in front of them, looking exactly the same as it did on that terrible night so long ago. The front gate has a new flowering bush next to it — hemlock, of course — but it’s otherwise unchanged. “You must be mad to think I’d go back in there.”

“I don’t think you’re mad, I think we can either stay out here and be noticed,” he flicks an anxious glance around, “or we can go in and talk.” When Louis still hesitates, he begs, “ _Please,_ Louis.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Louis mumbles, but he follows Harry anyway.

The place is empty, no silver or gold souls hidden in the darkness, no black-hole demons waiting to ambush him. Just Harry and Louis, together again despite reason or belief.

Harry leads the way to a room Louis hasn’t been in before, and he’s beyond grateful: he’ll burn this house down before he sets foot in the exact place where he thought he lost Harry to forever. He thinks this might have been Gemma’s room, the fresco on the wall painted with a shaky hand in Gemma’s favorite shades of purple.

“I don’t think we were followed,” Harry says, peeking out the window. Louis casts his mind out, finds nothing living or dead nearby, the parties at the sanctuary drawing the crowds away from the quiet little homes near the river.

“We weren’t,” Louis says. “Is someone watching you?”

“I’ve had a tail for a few days,” Harry admits. “Angel, I think, but I can’t be sure. Still, erm. Still getting used to all this.” He waves his hand next to his ear.

There are dozens of angels in the area, and Michael could’ve used any of them for basic surveillance before he summoned Louis to end the situation. But he knows whoever it was isn’t here now; it’s just Harry, rubbing an anxious thumb over his own wrist.

Or. Or it’s Harry’s body, and some demon is inside it using Harry’s mannerisms and memories to trick Louis into letting his guard down. Louis won’t let that happen; he’s too wary, too on edge. He can escape easily if he needs to, and he’s pretty sure he can fight if it comes to that. He aches desperately, though, for that not to happen. He wants answers, and as of this moment this is the only way he knows how to get those.

“Right, about that,” Louis says. He takes a seat on the edge of the bed, knowing Harry will want the windowsill. “ _What the fuck is going on?”_

Harry laughs shortly, pulls his hands through his hair.

“Honestly?” he says. “Sometimes I don’t even know myself.”

“Start at the beginning. Maybe between the two of us we’ll figure it out.”

“Right,” Harry nods. “Right. So, you left,” he says. It’s not an accusation, but it feels like one. “And I could… I don’t know how to describe it. I could feel it, the- the disease, I could feel it moving through me. Things felt like they were shutting down, and I couldn’t. Couldn’t do anything about it.”

Hell, but if that doesn’t hurt. Louis pushes away the pain lancing through himself, makes himself refocus on Harry. “Then what?”

“I don’t know, I was… I was delirious, I think. The pain potion wasn’t doing anything. I’d sent Mother and Gemma away right after you, I didn’t want them to see me either. I think I must’ve been… I’m not sure. Talking in my sleep, maybe? And I was thinking of you,” he flicks his glance up at Louis, still looking anxious. “I promised I’d think of you, so I did. No matter what happened, I thought of you, and I imagined your voice, but I must’ve been saying the words out loud that I remembered hearing from you first, when you told stories. That’s all I can figure out.”

“What words?” Louis asks.

“I don’t know,” Harry whispers. “It didn’t sound like Greek in my head, but I couldn’t really make sense of anything at that point, so who knows. And I must’ve… must’ve said something that… triggered something. Because next thing I knew, there was someone standing over me.”

Louis’ hands are shaking. “Who?”

“I didn’t know him. He was tall, thin. Said his name was Nick.” The name rings a faint bell in Louis’ head, but he doesn’t bother chasing it, so he shakes his head. “And he said… he asked what I wanted, and I,” Harry draws in a deep breath. “I said I wanted to live forever, or I got the point across somehow. I said I wanted to be an angel, but he said deals didn’t work like that.”

They don’t; Louis isn’t really up on his possession basics, and this is the longest he’s been in the presence of a demon so he doesn’t know specifics (like who, exactly, he’s talking to, if it’s really Harry in there). But everyone knows demon deals are limited to the creativity of the demon involved, tying insubstantial human desires to tangible goods. The talented ones can twist something like _I want to be happy_ into _I want to be rich and adored_ but they take heavy payment in exchange, usually damnation. They definitely can’t hand out angel wings, though, Louis is sure of that; if they could, they’d grant that power to themselves, and then there’d be no difference between the Light and the Dark after all.

It’s also incredibly rare for humans to become angels. Self-sacrifice is usually involved, and a purity of heart almost impossible to achieve. Of course Harry wanted to be an angel; most dying people do. But he wasn’t destined for that.

“But…” Harry trails off. “He said he couldn’t do that, but that he had another proposal.”

“Harry-“ Louis says, stomach twisting. “Please tell me you didn’t-“

“Most demon deals last about ten years, did you know?” Harry asks. His eyes are bright, his silhouette backlit by the sunshine outside. “The demons who make the deals aren’t strong enough to tie humans to contracts longer than that. But Nick, he said he’s a little higher up in the ranks than those demons, and he could make me a better offer.”

It clicks then, where Louis has heard the name Nick before — they worked together, centuries back, in that fiasco with the Tower of Babel. One of the only times angels and demons alike agreed that humans had to be stopped or they’d wreck their entire species and take the planet with them. Demons don’t have titles and ranks like angels do, but if they did, Nick is only a little less powerful than Louis.

And humans becoming demons is just about as rare as them becoming angels. Terrible things have to be done, things Louis knows Harry isn’t capable of, and there has to be a blackness of the soul already there for a demonic spirit to take hold. There’s no way Harry could do it on his own.

But Nick could.

“Harry,” Louis swallows, his throat constricted. He hasn’t cried since- well since the last time he was in this house, and the world was crashing down on him because of this same sweet face.

“I was offered fifty years Below in exchange for eternity on Earth,” Harry says. His voice isn’t shaking anymore, his chin lifted a little as though to invite Louis to criticize his choice.

“As a demon?” Louis asks.

“As a demon,” Harry confirms.

“ _[ὰ τὸν κύνα](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.gp6y4b7j72m)_ ,” Louis curses weakly. He already knew, couldn’t help but know it, with all his senses screaming out that he needs to go, to get away, _danger, danger_ buzzing inside him. Angels aren’t meant to even be around demons, they’re meant to be on full alert if one is nearby; his system won’t let him settle.

He knew, but it still hurts to hear it.

Harry reaches out as if to take Louis’ hand and, despite _knowing_ that they’ve already touched and the world didn’t crack in half, despite Harry already holding his hand for long minutes earlier, Louis pulls his arm away. He’s loved and ached for Harry for eighty long years, eighty impossible years, and yet.

And yet this is different.

Harry snatches his hand back away too, as though Louis’ little twitch away from him burned him. His eyes are stormy with hurt; Louis gets that. He does. It hurts him too, it hurts like _Hell_ — not that he’d know the specifics of that, but Harry would. Fuck, Harry knows _Hell_ — but he’s been alive too many millennia for his body to not react to a demon reaching out to him.

It hurts it hurts it _hurts_. The reality of it all is just setting it: he’s an angel, and Harry’s no longer a breakable human with a countdown of a lifespan. He’s a _demon_. His soul is black. His life, afterlife, _whatever,_ is dedicated to the opposite cause of Louis’.  The moment Harry agreed to that deal, he became a soldier on the other side of the war Louis has been fighting all his life.

And the only thing his hysterical mind is capable of producing is _well, we had a good run._

“Is this it, then?” he asks. “I could barely get away with spending all my time with you before. But now?” He shakes his head. “Impossible.”

“No, it’s not impossible,” Harry says, voice catching. “Here we are, you and me, and nothing bad has happened. It’s absolutely possible.”

“You’re a _demon,”_ Louis reminds him brokenly.

“And you’re an angel,” Harry shoots back. “You think I don’t feel it? That panic, the buzz that says I shouldn’t be near you, not if I want to live? I feel it, and I’m still here. Why are you trying to run away?”

“I’m not running away!” Louis insists. “This isn’t my decision! If I spend time around a demon, they’ll- they’ll-“

“They’ll what?” Harry murmurs. “What’s the punishment? Who’s doing the punishing?”

And Louis stops, because, “I don’t know.” But. “It doesn’t _matter,_ don’t you understand? You’re a demon, you’re _evil.”_

“I don’t feel evil,” Harry says. He stretches out his arms at his sides, like he’s trying to show Louis he isn’t hiding any evil in his chiton. “And I haven’t done evil. Not- not here, not on Earth. I was given an opportunity, and I took it.”

“Yes, you took it,” Louis agrees. “You wanted eternal life, you got it, but you can’t have me and immortality both.”

Harry’s jaw drops. “What do you mean, I _wanted_ -“

“Listen, I get it,” Louis interrupts. His wings fade into existence, buffeting the air for a moment because he’s too preoccupied by the love of his long life showing up again as a different species to care about propriety and pretending to be a human. “You were faced with death, and that’s scary. Death is a hard thing for a mind to wrap around. So you wanted to live, and a demon offered that to you. Again, I get it. But,” he enunciates, hoping his desperate aching tears stay where they belong until he gets through this conversation and can get away to cry in peace, “you accepted that deal and you lost me. That’s how that works.”

“I-“ Harry stammers, and he looks like he absolutely has lost every word in his head. “What are you-“

“We don’t have to be mortal enemies,” Louis says, as soothingly as he can over the rough cracks in his own voice. “But we’re on different sides of it all now. What we had, that’s- that’s gone.” Harry sobs, just once, his fists clenching. Louis scrambles to comfort him, because even the black-eyed version of Harry doesn’t deserve to cry. “But you still have eternity, right? You’ll get to see the world change, you’ll see history in motion. Isn’t that why you did it?”

“No!” Harry cries, wiping viciously at his eyes. “No, I didn’t do it just for the sake of _living_. I did it for _you!”_

Louis doesn’t have a heart. He reminds himself of that, because something in his chest feels like it’s splintering in half and if it’s not his heart, what could it be? “What?” he whispers.

“You think I begged for eternal life because I was scared to die?” Harry continues, tears free-falling down his cheeks. “You think I was fine with trading my soul and spending years, _decades,_ in Hell just so I could come back for fun? If I could’ve died and had you waiting for me on the other side, I would have let go without a second thought. But you’re here, so I found a way to stay here too.” His voice is throaty; he’s not screaming, but Louis almost wishes he would. “I did what I had to do.”

“I-“ Louis says. There’s no end to that sentence that can fix anything, or do anything.

“I did what I did for _you,_ for _us,_ and if I can’t have that I’ll- I’ll-“

“Harry,” Louis breathes, and he steps close and wraps Harry in a hug before he remembers he’s not supposed to do that. Harry shudders and slumps against him, still crying heavy, aching tears. “Harry, I didn’t know, I’m so sorry.”

“Please don’t send me away,” Harry whispers, “please don’t leave me here. I can’t bear it.”

“Never,” Louis promises, and that’s stupid, it’s so stupid because the boy he loves is now a demon he doesn’t really know, but it’s Louis and Harry and if they can’t be together, nothing in the cosmos makes sense.

Louis doesn’t want to go. So… so he won’t.

And maybe this is the worst idea of all time.

But maybe it isn’t.

“Fifty years,” he says quietly. Fifty years in the most unimaginable sort of place, fifty years for a penance Harry didn’t earn.

“It was hard,” Harry mumbles, almost off-handedly, like it was a unproductive trip to the market rather than a half century spent in fire. “And I’m not- I’m not the same person I was before. I’m different, Louis.” He meets Louis’ eyes meaningfully. “I’m not the boy you fell in love with.”

He's right; the blackness radiating out of the center of him is brand new, like shiny obsidian. He's shaped differently, all whip-cord strength in long limbs, and he talks differently, hesitant and careful, choosing his words wisely, but.

But he looks at Louis exactly the same way he always did. 

Louis brushes the hair off of Harry’s face, warm and wet from tears. “Is your favorite color still blue?” he asks.

Harry blinks. “Yes, it is, but-“

“Do you still sleep better with the windows open?”

“Yes-“

“Do you still sit by the edge of the river when you need to think?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still love me?”

A slow, cautious smile spreads across Harry’s face. “I do,” he confirms. He takes Louis’ hand again, his skin burning like fire. “I didn’t know how to find you.”

Louis squeezes Harry’s fingers. “I was trying not to look for you anymore.”

Louis sways up onto his tiptoes. He’s going to kiss Harry again; it’s been eighty years, it’s been an eternity, it’s been Hell and back — literally for one of them, metaphorically for the other — but he’s going to get to kiss Harry again.

That is, until a trumpet blast somewhere relatively nearby startles them both apart.

“The emperor is here!” someone announces distantly, and a wave of cheers meets the proclamation.

“The emperor,” Harry whispers, pulling back from Louis. “Damn. I have to go.”

“So do-“ Louis stops, turning back to Harry with his eyes narrowed. “So do I. Are you the assassin I was sent to stop?”

Harry grins sheepishly. “No?” Clears his throat, wipes the last few tears off his face. “Um, but I am supposed to _convince_ someone to become an assassin.”

Louis exhales a laugh, startled. “I should’ve known.” He shakes his head, and Harry smiles back at him.

“Just like old times, isn’t it?” he says softly.

“Not quite,” Louis says. He and Harry sprinting through the Olympia streets, chasing each other across rooftops and between market stalls, shamming for drachmas and pranking each other to make people laugh; that was a long time ago. The lives and deaths of humans are all tied up in it now, there are souls and fates on the line.

But then Harry grins, his _come on, Lou_ grin, the one that could convince Louis to take a running leap off the edge of the world.

“May the best man win,” Harry says grandly, extending his hand for Louis to shake.

Louis smiles so widely his cheeks ache, and it’s been so long since that happened that, for a moment, he forgets that a world exists outside of Harry and his smile.

“I intend to,” he says with a wink, and then they're off, stumbling over each other as they sprint for the door, laughter painting the air behind them.

Just like nothing has changed at all.  

 

* * *

 

 Louis wins; Hadrian lives to move on to another city and survives another year as the Roman Emperor. It only took some strategic maneuvering and some whispering in the ears of his guards to be in the right place at the right time; Harry sent assassin after assassin (all paid with conjured up drachmas, desperate and hungry and willing to do anything for the coin) and if sheer numbers could overwhelm, he might’ve pulled through.

Unfortunately for him, this is not Louis’ first time stopping an assassination.

Still, there were close calls the entire time. Once, Harry sends a slightly-shaking serving girl to Hadrian’s rooms, carrying a tray with a single pitcher of wine. Louis only barely noticed the faint aroma of poison — hemlock, he thought; maybe Harry felt inspired — before Hadrian put the goblet to his lips, and he had to knock over a statue of [Aphrodite](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.4hikvi65ywf6) outside his rooms to startle him into setting the drink aside so Louis could whisk it away.

“I’m not exactly learned in art,” Harry says later, propping his elbow on Louis’ shoulder and surveying the damage to Aphrodite, her marble arms lying on the ground next to her. “But I think she looks better that way.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that,” Louis says, pinching Harry’s side, and he gets a grin before they’re off again to try something new.

Hadrian leaves Olympia after a month spent in the city, and Harry and Louis watch the departure of his thousands of chariots and wagons from on top of the westernmost villa.

“Are you staying here?” Louis asks. He and Harry are determinedly not looking at each other, watching the stretch of horses and humans all the way to the horizon.

“No,” Harry answers. His fingers brush Louis’ where they rest between them. “Egypt, next. Have to start a plague.”

“That’s a nasty business,” Louis says, trying to keep his tone light.

“Mhmm.”

“Might… might need to go oversee things myself,” he continues, still light, light as air or feathers or something not soul-crushingly huge like offering to follow his newly demonic best friend to a new continent. “Plagues are busy work for angels.”

Harry inhales quietly, fingers twitching in surprise. “You might be right. They could use your help.”  

Louis chances a sideways glance at Harry, and finds him looking back already, eyes hopeful. Louis grins, and takes Harry’s hand more firmly before concentrating on sand and eucalyptus winds and _not_ how warm Harry’s hand is in his, then blinks and sends them jumping across space and time in the matter of a second.

He doesn’t let go of Harry’s hand when their feet hit new ground.

In fact, he doesn’t let go for a long, long time.

 

* * *

 

Louis will never really know what fate Harry was destined for before Nick offered him his deal. Above or Below; he has his guess, of course, but he's been wrong on those things before.

Lottie could tell him; would tell him, if he got up the nerve to ask.

He doesn't want to.

Because this — this is the love story Louis didn't know angels could have. Harry, Louis truly believes with all the grace in his body, was destined for an eternity of peace and white clouds and ever-present happiness. No pain, no guilt, no terror or suffering. And he denied that fate, hell, he turned down that God-given gift, all in the hopes he could spend forever on Earth with Louis.

Harry damned himself for Louis; Louis won't ever forget that.

And, luckily, he's got forever to make it up to him.

 

* * *

 

_Cottingham, Yorkshire, England | January 2016_

Louis wakes feeling like he’s been walloped across the back of the head by a large stick or perhaps a small tree. He groans, lifting a hand to his skull: there’s no knot or bump, so he wasn’t attacked in his own flat by something strong enough to knock him out.

A summoning, then, and a badly-done one at that.

“He's awake,” says a timid voice nearby.

“Should we, just... go for it?” asks another.

“Isn't he supposed to have wings?”

“I don't know, what does the book say?”

“Fuck the book, it's all vague mumbo jumbo anyway.”

“Well it worked, didn't it?”

Louis blinks his eyes open, and finds himself squinting up at the dim light emanating from a single lightbulb overhead. The ceiling around the lightbulb is stained and damp, and Louis sighs; this isn’t the first time he’s been summoned to a dirty basement by a curious conspiracy theorist, and it won’t be the last.

He flexes his hands and feels a sting; when he pushes up his sleeve he sees a strange rune carved there in the crook of his right elbow. Louis doesn’t recognize it off the top of his head, but that whoever summoned him was even able to leave a mark on him is interesting enough.

“Not very intimidating, is he?” one of the voices nearby breathes, barely less than a whisper. It snaps Louis out of inspecting the rune, and he remembers where he is, what he was doing. “Are we sure that’s actually an angel?”

Louis huffs to himself, sitting up slowly. He could be intimidating if he wanted to, could do the whole all-powerful-immortal-here-to-raze-you-to-the-ground-how-dare-you-etc-etc routine, but he’s feeling a bit petulant at the moment. His head hurts from a poorly done summoning, he didn’t know he’d be seeing anyone today so he’s still in the stained sweatpants he’s been wearing for the past two days, and he was right in the middle of a decent episode of _One Tree Hill._ He’s _allowed_ to be cross.

Then a deep rumble from somewhere off to his left asks, “Lou?” and his pity party is derailed.

Louis rubs his eyes and blinks them open again; humans have been trying to trap him and Harry since before there were even books to house the spells to do it, but they’ve never been summoned simultaneously by the same person.

“Hey, Haz,” Louis says. Harry waves sheepishly back at him.

He’s sitting cross-legged in the middle of a pentagram, the outline drawn in salt, waxy black candles flickering at each of the star’s points. Glamours aren’t possible within summoning circles, they slide off the skin like oil, so Harry’s in his true Form. Even after a couple of millennia together, Louis isn’t used to seeing him like this out in public and that, more than the headache bouncing around his skull, tips him off that this isn’t the average summoner looking to wheedle out an easy deal. Something strange has happened here.

Harry flicks his glance past Louis, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at whoever is behind him. Louis turns to see who it was that called him here and things, somehow, make a little more sense and get a little weirder at the exact same time.

A group of six teenagers is huddled together, awestruck and wide-eyed, in the corner of the basement. They’re all wearing black robes, though they aren’t the same heavy, restricting fabric Louis got used to seeing during the height of the Inquisition, where religious fanatics were questioning suspected witches in one dungeon, and in the next one over they were chanting Latin in hopes of summoning anything somewhat fantastic to answer their questions. These teenagers have improvised; one seems to be in a black dressing gown, another is in an academic gown. Louis is pretty sure the spotty one in the back is wearing a Dracula cape from a fancy dress costume.

Altogether, not wholly frightening.

“Alright, then,” Louis snorts, getting to his feet. He’s not contained inside a summoning circle like Harry is, so his human glamour is still in place. He stretches, scratching sleepily at his stomach. “What do you want?”

“Silence, seraphim!” barks the human nearest him. The boy is gangly and sharp-boned, skinny in a way that says he won’t grow out of it, and has a look about him that reminds Louis of an angry chihuahua, all bug eyes and bared teeth. Louis raises an eyebrow at his introduction — for the insolence and for getting his title completely wrong, though he does like that they assume he’s more powerful than he really is — and he hears Harry snort. “We,” the boy continues, then falters, “erm, we are they who- who summoned ye.” He looks down at the black book on an ornate stand in front of him as though it’ll give him a script for this — Louis almost laughs, imagining the header for that particular page: _Baby’s First Summoning._ “And, um. We demand… uh. We demand…”   

He looks around at his friends, like a schoolchild in a play who has forgotten his line. “Recompense?” Louis suggests, and the boy swallows.

“R-right. That. We demand recompense.”

“We want to be popular,” squeaks another, who then shrinks back into the corner when Louis turns toward him. Louis hums as though it’s a great problem to consider and hides a grin; he failed at his dramatic entrance, but he’s _totally_ still got it.

“We want girlfriends, too,” says the leader, a little more boldly this time. “And we summoned you to make that happen.”

“Okay,” Louis says mildly, then gestures to Harry, still sitting in the pentagram with his arms wrapped comfortably around his knees. “Why don’t you ask him to do it? He’s perfectly capable of trading your soul for something so vapid it’s almost laughable, and he’d offer you a decent price, at least. You don’t really need me here, and I’m missing my show.”

Harry snorts again. “Louis,” he chides. His voice — the _real_ one, the one he got when he went Below for a few decades and then came back up all dark-eyed and fiery — has the eerie double timbre Louis used to associate with deep, dark pits and eternal suffering, back before Harry. When that voice is saying Louis’ name, though, it’s not so bad. “Be nice.”

“You speak English!” one of the boys gasps.

Louis quirks an eyebrow at Harry, who smirks. “I was singing _Bohemian Rhapsody_ in Latin before you got here.”

“Nice,” Louis chuckles. He steps toward Harry and squats, surveying the boundary holding Harry in, checking for hidden tricks; he doesn’t think these kids are smart enough to have hidden holy oil under the salt, but there’s no such thing as too much caution. “How’d you end up here? You’re usually better at spotting traps than this.”

“Dunno,” Harry says thoughtfully, thumbing at his lip with a clawed finger. “I was at Niall’s, and then I thought I heard-“

“Silence!” the leader shouts again. Irritation prickles at Louis’ skin, but Harry meets his eyes and a tiny moment of _I’m fine, go take care of it_ passes between them. Louis stands slowly, his eyes narrowed. “We summoned both of you because the book says that if you offer the demon what it desires most, it will be more likely to work with you.”

“We didn’t know why it would want an angel,” admits one of the boys tremulously, pushing his smudged glasses back up on his nose. “We thought it might want to kill you, or something.”

“And you were okay with that, were you?” Louis asks mildly. “An angel being murdered in front of you and you were just going to, what- watch?”

He tunes out their sputtering excuses, spinning slowly and surveying the room. It’s about as basement-in-a-nowhere-village as you could reasonably expect, a ragged couch pushed to one wall, a dusty drum set in a corner, a washer and dryer and a pile of clean whites next to the stairs. Rather boring, Louis thinks. Not really what you’d expect from people who can double-summon an angel and a demon. The only bit of magic besides the demon in the summoning circle, the angel right next to him, and the dark-bound spellbook with a sickly feeling radiating off of it, is a single small blue flame in a jar, being used as a reading light next to the spellbook.

Louis _almost_ rolls his eyes, but keeps it in check — his sisters went through a Harry Potter phase too, but they never went so far as to summon a bit of blue fire just to be like Hermione.

He meets Harry’s eyes again and winks. “What you desire most, eh?” he repeats for Harry’s benefit, still ignoring the humans who brought them here. If Harry still had his human glamours on, he’d be bright pink; as it is, he ducks his head and curls his shoulders, sickeningly sweet.

“Lou,” Harry huffs, smiling bashfully. He’s so cute he’d make Louis’ heart thump, if he had one of those.

“No worries, love,” Louis chuckles. “It’s definitely mutual.”

“Wait,” says the leader of the little wannabe gang who think they’re still relevant to this situation. “Are you two, like, _together?”_ His face twists in disgust, as though a demon and an angel spending time together is somehow worse than six unlikeable children summoning one of Heaven’s highest and one of Hell’s lowest to this shitty little basement to bargain their souls for popularity. And then he makes it worse. “How does an angel fall in love with something like _that?”_

Louis feels his eyes narrow dangerously, and he catches Harry frowning from the corner of his eye. The candlelight flickers against Harry’s smokeskin; his veins of fire are spiderwebbed through his arms and legs, coursing tiny flames towards his heart and standing out in sharp relief against the dim background. There’s a diamond diadem on his brow that he got back in the fifteenth century for sweet-talking a convent into turning into a brothel instead, and it catches the low light from the lone lightbulb. The flat black of his wide eyes does the opposite, catching the light and keeping it, reflecting nothing in their depths. He’s absolutely terrifying, and he’s the most incredible thing Louis has ever seen.

Meanwhile, there’s this _brat_ standing there in what must be his dad’s dressing gown, drooping sadly off his thin shoulders, smirking as though he expects Louis to join in on ribbing Harry. Louis blinks into his Vision and looks into this teenager’s heart of hearts to see that the silver tinge of his soul is more like dirty slate, nasty and vindictive. Louis, in a glance, can read this child’s deepest fears and darkest thoughts and, ultimately, is wholly unimpressed.

It took Harry a long time — decades, in fact — to be confident enough in himself and their relationship that Louis wouldn’t run away at seeing his true Form. That trust was built up over years, and now this tiny little ant of a creature with the self-importance of Beelzebub himself — _Benjamin,_ what a twat — has insulted what Louis has always felt _privileged_ to see.

Louis waves his hand and lets the distaste curl his mouth. “Hazza, if you could?”

Harry, who all throughout this conversation has been widening a crack in the concrete floor, clambers gracelessly to his feet. Enough salt has fallen into the new crack that the shape of the pentagram is broken, the candles sputtering out in their own wax as Harry’s strength and powers return to him in full. He steps out of his temporary prison with no more than a light shudder, and the boys in black all gasp, scuttling backwards but realizing, a little too late, that they’ve backed themselves in a corner and have nowhere to go.

“Hi, baby,” Louis says, kissing Harry hello. Harry hums against his lips, his own wordless greeting. “Can you take care of them for a moment? I want to burn their stuff so that _someone,”_ he shoots a dirty look at Benjamin, “can’t just immediately summon someone else down here next.”

“No, you can’t!” Benjamin cries, voice gone shrill. “That’s my grandmother’s book, she was a powerful witch in her time!” Louis scoffs; most of the last real powerful witches died out in the Dark Ages (due to a magical flu epidemic that swept through their ranks at one of their annual conventions, not because of any effort made by the laughable notion of human witch-hunters).

Louis flips through the massive bound book for a moment and is even less impressed than before, because Benjamin’s grandmother was a rudimentary witch at best and truly awful at worst. Her Latin was horrendous, too, which is probably how they accidentally managed to capture one of the most powerful demons currently walking the planet instead of some small-time newbie who’s looking for easy souls to claim. Benjamin doesn’t seem to care about that. “Leave my things alone, you piece of-“

“That’s quite enough out of you,” Harry says disapprovingly, waving his hand. The group of teenagers freezes, Benjamin’s horrid little mouth hanging agape mid-insult.

Harry dusts off his legs and walks over to a half-empty bookshelf nearby, where, Louis has just noticed, Harry’s necklace rests on a little piece of black cloth, as though the kids had planned on keeping it for a trophy. He slips it over his head and his glamour reappears, his long curls swept out of his eyes with a piece of patterned silk, tight jeans clinging indecently to his thighs, his eyes green-gold and reflecting the light from the gently swinging bulb overhead. The necklace glints in the dip of his chest, the silver cross a little worn at the edges but still shiny as the day Harry bought it from a vendor in a Venetian shop.

He slides his hand down Louis’ arm, still frowning a little. “You okay?” he asks, leaning in to press a kiss to Louis’ cheek.

“Mm,” Louis says, cheek going warm from Harry’s lips. “A little irritated at our high and mighty captor, but otherwise fine, yeah. Why?”

“I was trying to ask earlier, but I got interrupted,” Harry says, indicating the teenagers with a nod of his head, “I only stepped into the trap because I thought I heard your voice. I hadn’t ever heard of humans having a trick like that, so I thought they actually had you.”

Louis’ brow furrows as well, because that’s a new one for him, too. He rubs his knuckles up Harry’s arm. “I think they just read badly translated Latin, and it had some weird side effects,” he says. “Look at this.”

He shows Harry the front of the spell tome, the black leather cracked and faded with age, the title and description carved in and painted, nauseatingly enough, in what looks like old blood.

_Carminibus Cinis  
_ _Igni natura vincantur integra_

Harry wrinkles his nose. “That’s not how the saying goes.”

“I know,” Louis agrees. “But look at this.”  

Under the line of bastardized Latin is a carved rune, the same one that adorns Louis’ arm now, right in the sensitive inside of his elbow. It looks a bit like the outline of a fire, a rounded bottom leading up to two shorter flames on each side, a taller flame in the middle. Inside the silhouette of the flame is a hand, stylized and simple. The hand is palm-up, the fingers curled upwards like they’re shielding something from view.

Louis pushes up his sleeve and shows Harry the still-fresh cut, that same rune there on his skin; Harry frowns, and pushes his own sleeve up, and there’s one in the crook of his elbow as well.

“I don’t remember them doing this,” Harry says, brow furrowed. “And they must have done it to you before you woke up, because I didn’t even know you were here until they dragged you in, already unconscious.”

“Do you recognize it?” Louis asks.

“No, but don’t cults and covens make up their own insignias all the time? Maybe this is theirs.” He rubs his thumb over Louis’ elbow. “They had to have a special weapon to be able to do this.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Louis says. He looks back over at the teenagers, assessing, but not a single one of them radiates enough power to be dangerous. The leader, Benjamin, might have enough magical energy to boil a cup of water, but that’s about it. “Maybe they had help. Someone who didn’t want us to see them.”

“Maybe,” Harry says, biting his lip. “I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I,” Louis admits. “But I don’t feel anything in here that would be a powerful enough weapon to make these cuts, and like I said, I think their spellbook just has bad Latin that happened to work in their favor. But, just in case.” He snaps his fingers and Benjamin’s grandmother’s book bursts into flames. It’s ash in seconds, a pathetic pile of grey dust on the concrete.

Harry hums in satisfaction and nuzzles behind Louis’ ear. “Good. Let’s finish this and go home.”

“You’re a genius,” Louis says, then remembers the kids still frozen nearby. “We should take care of them, too, though. They don’t seem nearly as scared of me as they should be.”

Harry rolls his eyes but grins, stepping back a little. He lifts his arms, ready to drop the stasis spell when Louis is ready. Louis blows a kiss and Harry catches it, then waves his hands. Benjamin and his friends blink the cobwebs out of their eyes as Louis drops his own glamours, sliding out of the skin of Louis Tomlinson and into his natural Form. His sigils burn like holy fire across his chest and arms. His wings flare out behind him, black and star-sprinkled like the night sky, tipped in iridescence and trailing stardust. He closes his eyes and when he opens them again the world has gone red, his eyes firelit like embers.

The teenagers return to full consciousness with a Biblical nightmare looming over them. Louis’ sword burns in his hand, burns like the hot gas of a supernova, but he doesn’t feel the heat.

(For someone on the side of Light, it’s possible that he shouldn’t enjoy the terrified screams quite as much as he does.)

(But he _does_ enjoy them. Because those kids are twats.)

“Dabble no more in the sin of witchcraft,” Louis booms, his voice a rumble like an earthquake, shaking the walls of the room. He hopes for Benjamin’s sake that his parents aren’t home as the echoes of his words rock the foundations of the house; that’d be a tough one to explain to mum and dad. Dust falls from the basement rafters; in a full square mile around this basement, a dozen different dogs start howling in terror. “Be steadfast and earnest in your supplications, and you might be forgiven.” He spares a look for Benjamin, thinking to himself _that’s_ _unlikely._ “Traverse the road of unrighteousness again, and you shall be _struck down_.”

One of the teenagers bursts into tears. Another falls to his knees, pleading for mercy.

Feeling satisfied and fully appreciated, Louis draws Harry in under his outstretched wing and smiles at him, a grin full of molten, blinding gold. Harry grins back and holds tight as Louis blinks them back to their quiet flat, Chad Michael Murray still on screen where Louis left him.

Louis shivers back into his glamours and collapses onto the sofa with Harry tucked against his side, and he can feel the exact moment Benjamin and his moron friends start praying for forgiveness. The energy glows in Louis’ fingertips, their minor souls not much of a prize, but he’s not one to complain about a little bit of scared straight tactics.

“Those were supposed to be my souls,” Harry says, his own energy dimming a little. He sends Louis a pointed _look,_ popping a piece of Louis’ almost-stale popcorn into his mouth.

“Sorry, baby,” Louis says, brushing a kiss against Harry’s forehead. “To be fair, you’ll probably get a couple of them back in the next few years. Resorting to witchcraft as a teen can lead to some interesting sins later in life.”

“True,” Harry grins, cheered up. “Besides, there are a couple of priests in Lambeth teetering on the edge of Dark, I’ll grab them later.”

And so one of Heaven’s highest and one of Hell’s lowest fall asleep tangled on an old, worn sofa, a blanket thrown over their laps, a teen drama playing on the TV screen.

 

* * *

 

In a dingy little bolthole on the other side of London, someone else is flipping through an exact copy of the book Louis just burned. She just got an interesting phone call from her nephew, who swears something strange happened when they tried that spell she showed him, and yes, he promises, they got rid of the blessed knife they used.

She makes a note of the spell in question and smiles, sharp like razor blade, sharp like antiseptic in a cut.

It’s time.


	2. THE MIDDLE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just for the ease of keeping track of the scenes: all the "present day" (2016) scenes are in chronological order, so those don't skip around. the other scenes aren't, but that's for storybuilding purposes, exposition of the narrative, foreshadowing, etc etc. hope that clears up any confusion! 
> 
> **warnings for this chapter:** brief descriptions of violence, minor offscreen character death

PART TWO — THE MIDDLE

 _and yes, I do believe_  
_his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me_  
_like stars. Names of heat and names of light,  
names of collision in the dark_

 

_Salvador, Bay of All Saints (present day Brazil) | 1549_

Unsurprisingly, it takes Harry a while to get used to being a demon. 

Louis has only ever been an angel, so he couldn't possibly understand what it's like to be one thing, to undergo voluntary (but no less unbearable) torture and punishment in Hell for fifty years, and then to be thrown back out into humanity as an entirely new species. So he tries to help where he can, nudging his higher-ups for information on what's typical for demons — “Totally hypothetical, of course,” Louis breezily reassures one of the Thrones, James, who rolls his eyes because he knows Louis too well to believe that — and helping Harry through the more unpleasant parts of demonology.  
  
Harry adapts easily enough to most of it, though; he learns to regulate his emotions so his eyes don't flash black every time he gets a little perturbed. He gets advice from his own superior, Nick, and Nick’s friends, Greg and Pixie and Aimee and Alexa. He gets used to the claws that pop when he's irritated, and the growl that rumbles in his throat unconsciously when he's jealous, and the new strength that makes it possible to toss Louis across the room when he gets a little enthusiastic.

(Louis definitely doesn't mind that particular side effect, and they can afford to repair a few holes in a few walls after a couple of memorable nights.)

It's not just the new physical attributes, either: Harry learns to read people in a way Louis can’t. Angels focus on souls, the end game, the big picture. Demons, however, focus on _desires._

Louis can take a look at a man’s soul and see that it’s dusky gold like a sunset, can know that he fears death and his wife leaving him and see the little tics and tacs of sins committed, knowing overall that this is person destined for the Light, as long as nothing approaches him to tempt him away. And then Harry can look at that same man and doesn’t see the dusky gold but does see that he fears isolation, fears humiliation, and desires nothing more than to be remembered. Harry offers the human what he wants, and sometimes the man will take it. Sometimes it takes Harry changing his glamours, approaching as a beautiful woman dipped in deadly poison, or a hardened warrior promising fame and glory. Harry looks at a human and sees their limits, and it’s his job to exploit them. 

And that’s what he has to reconcile.

He only asks once, and it’s when they’re sitting side-by-side on the edge of a rickety wooden bridge, sunlight dancing off the ocean in front of them, their feet brushing as the waves swirl around them. It’s 1549 and the world is on the edge of change yet again, a ship carrying soldiers and Jesuit priests a speck on the horizon slowly drifting closer. It’ll arrive and devastation will reign, but for right now Louis isn’t worried about what will inevitably happen when the ship reaches land.  
  
He’s worried, instead, about Harry, and the quiet question muttered to Louis almost like he hopes Louis won't hear and answer: "What do you see when you look at my soul?"

Harry throws the question out like it doesn’t matter to him, but there’s a tremor in his voice that they both know Louis hears.  
  
Harry doesn’t know that Louis never saw his soul when he was human; he probably still think Louis knows where he was headed when (if) he died as a mortal, Above or Below, Light or Dark. It doesn’t matter anymore, though, because Louis doesn’t even have to blink into his Vision to feel the blackness there now, deep and seductive.  
  
But he asked, and Louis wants to answer, to _really_ answer, so he looks past Harry’s glamours, past his Form, his true skin, his veins of fire and heat, and finds his soul.  
  
It’s black, yes. Black like sin, if sin had a color.  
  
And that’s what Harry hates, Louis knows, because black has always had a connotation with death, and despair, and disease. It’s never been associated with good things, happy things.  
  
But there’s more, too. Because Harry isn’t a demon who was twisted into darkness when he was still human; he _chose_ darkness, a self-sacrifice. His soul is black but in the same way the night sky is black: deep and endless, sprinkled with bits of light. Sparkle. Vast and overwhelming, containing the possibilities for anything.  
  
It’s black like panther fur is black, shifting blues and purples when the light hits a splay of powerful muscle. It’s black like an eclipsed moon. Black like tattoo ink. The blackness has meaning; the blackness _is_ meaning: it hides speckles of brilliance in its depths, adds contrast to the bronze braids of hope and faith in Harry’s soul, the harp strings of kindness buried inside him that the sin could never touch.    
  
Louis takes a deep breath.  
  
“There are creatures here, at the bottom of the ocean, that humans won’t discover for hundreds of years,” he says. He twines his fingers with Harry’s, his skin sun-warmed to even hotter than usual. “They’ll have to build artificial beings to go for them, because if a human tried to see the bottom of the ocean they’d die. But the machines are built and eventually humans can go, and they’ll find things there that they couldn’t even imagine.”  
  
Harry doesn’t look confused at Louis’ choice of topic — they’ve been together for centuries, and they face the prospect of millions of years more, so a bit of wandering conversation won’t keep them from anything too important — and he nods, nudging Louis into continuing.  
  
But Louis doesn’t say anything else, except, “Don’t panic,” right before he grips Harry’s hand tighter and blinks, thinking about cool blue and dark sand. Instantly, they’re under the weight of the water, a thousand feet below the bridge where they’d just been sitting, bare feet against the cold floor of the ocean.  
  
It’s a good thing neither of them need oxygen (anymore, in Harry’s case), because it’s in short supply down here. The weight of the water is so dense that it presses down like mountains on their immortal bones, the rippling water slowing their movements to half speed. It’s so incredibly dark that nights under a new moon seem bright by comparison, so dark that the concept of light seems to even mean less than it did just moments ago, when they were out in the steaming sunlight.  
  
Harry’s mind nudges against Louis’ — a useful little trick they’d learned was possible during Attila the Hun’s sweep through Gaul — and Louis turns. He can’t see Harry, it’s too dark and their eyes (while supernatural) will take a while to adjust, but he can imagine the face Harry is making: green eyes wide beneath a brow furrowed in confusion.  
  
_There’s something here,_ he thinks, the words passed into Louis’ mind. _I can feel something living, but I can’t see anything._  
  
Louis taps his fingers against Harry’s inner wrist, a silent _wait a moment_.  
  
It’s gradual and creeping, but it does happen: sunlight takes longer to penetrate through the deep water, but eventually Louis can make out shapes around them, and he can tell when Harry can see too because he can feel his gasp. Harry spins slowly and Louis lets him take it all in; he’d been here back in the Beginning, when these creatures were first let loose, so he lets Harry bask in something brand new without interruption.  
  
This little bit of the ocean seems dead and empty from above but in reality it isn’t. Poking out of the sand along the ocean floor are muted colors of coral hiding small schools of shimmering, darting fish. An eel twines around one of the coral spikes and eyes the newcomers warily. Crabs scuttle along the floor, dodging Harry and Louis’ ankles. A stingray hovers, partially covered by sand. In the distance looms something more menacing, something large and dangerous but not curious enough to come over, and it’s not that they couldn't escape anyway but the threat is enough to send sparks of adrenaline down Louis’ spine.  
  
Louis turns, cups Harry’s face in his hands, steals Harry’s attention back for just a moment.  
  
_This is what I see when I look at your soul,_ he thinks, projecting the words at Harry so he can’t possibly misunderstand. _Black at first glance, but there’s so much life hidden in it, waiting to be discovered, that now I can’t see anything but color._  
  
Harry exhales a stream of bubbles, his eyes a little red. He turns his head and kisses the center of Louis’ palm.  
  
_I love you_ , he mouths along with the thought he puts in Louis’ head.  
  
They stay on the bottom of the ocean for hours, letting the crabs scuttle over their legs, staying unnaturally still until the fish are weaving around them like they’re part of the landscape.  
  
When they resurface, Harry keeps a bright, contented smile tucked away for himself for days, and when Louis chances a look at Harry’s soul again there’s a brand new stripe of navy-cobalt-sapphire the exact color of the bottom of the ocean, and when Louis looks harder it feels a lot like love.

 

* * *

                                                                                 

  
_Dublin, Ireland | January 2016_  
  
Louis is on the tube, because the tube is like an experiment in humanity contained in a metal container and he likes to watch people when they think no one is looking. He’s on the way back to his and Harry’s flat when he feels a tug in the middle of his chest and he follows it, recognizing Niall’s particular brand of magic. He snaps his fingers as he goes and the people sharing the train car with him all look away; they won’t remember his face if they bother to look back on their commute later, won’t remember Louis at all except as a vague blur in the corner of their eyes.

Time and space squeeze around him — Niall’s magic is different than Louis’ or Harry’s, stronger in areas where theirs is weak and vice versa, so he can’t quite zap someone immediately over the Irish Sea — and Louis takes a breath when he reappears in Niall’s house a few moments later.  

“What was that for?” he asks Niall, who’s beaming as he shoves a bowl of mashed potatoes and a gravy boat into Louis’ hands and spins him toward the massive dining table, laden with food.  

“You weren’t answering me texts!” Niall answers indignantly, prodding Louis’ back with what feels like the end of a wooden spoon. “I was trying to tell you that the food would be ready later than usual tonight, but you never answered.” Another prod to Louis’ back, this one harder. “I have read receipts on, you know. I _know_ you were ignoring me.”

“I was getting on the tube, idiot,” Louis says, rolling his eyes. Potatoes and gravy deposited onto the table he turns, raising an eyebrow at Niall. “And anyway, what I’m hearing is that you magically yanked me over here early just to tell me I need to be here later than usual.”

“Noooo,” Niall drawls out, then looks down at his dining table, scratching idly at the wood varnish. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“About?”

Niall raises a significant eyebrow and Louis realizes that he’s not being facetious. “Oh,” he says, worry picking at his heart. “Alright, let me text Harry, then.”

“Meet me in the kitchen,” Niall says, heading that way. “I still need to start the roast.”

Louis pulls out his phone and shoots off a quick message to Harry. He could just reach out and find his mind, pass the message telepathically, but Harry likes the new setting on his shiny new phone that lets confetti explode on the screen (and Louis doesn’t blame him, because he knew of a lot of things before they happened, but he never could’ve predicted human technology and just how brilliant their little minds can be. He and Harry spent most of the nineteenth century at one World’s Fair or another, just taking in all that human creativity, and that was one of his favorite centuries he’s lived through so far. And don’t even get him _started_ on the internet).  

 _At Niall’s early, he wanted to talk,_ he taps out.

Harry answers back within seconds with a four-leafed clover emoji and the little sunhat with the green bow, and Louis takes that to mean _have a good talk, I’ll see you soon_ in Harry’s weird, wonderful way.

“Alright, dish,” Louis says when he’s in the kitchen, hopping up onto Niall’s countertop because he would be no use at all if he tried to help with the actual making of the food.

“Bres called today,” Niall says, chopping something green nearby. His shoulders are a little tight. “Wants me to come back to the Court.”

Louis picks at his fingernail, a habit he picked up from Harry a thousand years ago. “You said no, right?”

“O’course I said no,” Niall says, shooting Louis a wounded look. “The rest of them can hide themselves away and hope they’re never found. I _like_ being out in the world, thanks very much.”

Louis sits back, satisfied for himself but worried for his friend. The Tuatha haven’t handled the last few millennia well, and as the human population around Niall’s family slowly started to outnumber them, they secluded themselves more and more until they were confined to the most secret of their glens spread throughout Ireland, only leaving the safety of the hidden palaces in emergencies. Niall lived with Bressie and his Court for years when they first went underground, but he missed the outside world — all the humans going about their business, not worried anymore that Niall was going to turn them into trees or frogs or mice for being disrespectful, and not trying to wheedle miracles and magic out of him either. The world stopped believing in beings like Niall, and while that scared the rest of his family, for Niall it was like being set free.

“It’s better this way,” Niall says decisively, dumping a chopped pile of thyme onto the raw chicken sitting in a pan. “They’re all still hurt about being forgotten or not being the most powerful in the area anymore, when if they’d just stop,” he slices viciously through a leaf of parsley, “thinking about _themselves_ ,” another leaf falls victim to his knife, “they’d realize it’s so much _easier_ to live in a world we don’t have to run.”

Louis hums. Niall hasn’t been back to the Court in ages — he goes back when Bressie truly needs him there, or when he’s feeling guilty, but he never stays, and he almost inevitably leaves with another of the young Tuatha tucked under his arm, promising that they’re going to love the human world and all its advancements. But Louis knows he misses them, even stuck in their ways as they are: he and Bressie were once closer than Louis thinks Niall even lets on, and he thinks Bressie would do just about anything to get him back within his Court where he knows Niall would be safe.

But that would be like caging a lion, and a lion in a cage is a damn shame.

“I’m glad you’re out here with us, lad,” Louis says quietly.

“Yeah,” Niall says after a moment, eyes on his hands as he minces garlic. “Me too.” He clears his throat, and then changes the subject brightly. “D’jou see that pathetic performance Kane put up the other day? I was embarrassed on your behalf, mate.”

“Harry Kane is going to be the saving grace of England, don’t you worry,” Louis says, swinging his feet back against the cabinet door.

“And the Queen is starting in the goal,” Niall snorts. Louis throws an orange from a nearby fruit bowl at him, and Niall dodges it, laughing.

Soon, the usual suspects for their weekly dinners start arriving in twos and threes. Steve pops his head into the kitchen and says hello, then heads out to wait at the table with Zayn. Lottie can’t make it this week — she made plans in Tokyo and even though she can jump across the globe in an instant, she said she wouldn’t be back in time. Harry says she’s got a boyfriend, but Louis refuses to accept that — but James said he’d drop by, and Ed is already here, too. Some of Niall’s lot come tumbling in just as the clock on the wall chimes eight, all laughter and cold air stuck to them as Amy brushes snow out of her hair and Eoghan kicks the mud off his boots. Liam arrives with a _pop_ and a concussive press on Louis and Niall’s ears, appearing out of thin air rather gracelessly but straightening his posture quickly, adjusting his halo so it sits perfectly at regulation level above his head.

“H’lo,” he says, smiling. “Need any help?”

“Wine in the fridge needs to be taken out to the table and put in the ice bucket,” Niall says, pointing over his shoulder. “Thanks, Payno.”

Liam beams, happy to help, and lugs out all the wine and then all the silverware and then all the plates, too, and Louis laughs and follows him out to the table.

“How’s your week been, then?” Louis asks, arranging forks and knives on Niall’s forest green cloth napkins.

“Oh, it was good, sir!” Liam says. “Nothing major to report.”

“Dammit, Liam, I’m not asking for a status check, I’m asking because I’m interested,” Louis says, poking him with a fork. “And it’s been thirty years. Give it up with the _sir_ nonsense.”

“You’re my superior,” Liam says stubbornly, “and deference is in the rules.”

“Deference makes me itchy,” Louis says, tapping Liam hard on the back of the head. Liam frowns and rights his halo again. “And if you call me sir one more time, I’m stationing you in Antarctica until you stop.”

Liam sighs, world-weary, but he’s grinning a little as Louis snaps a cloth napkin at him.

“Alright, now,” Louis chuckles. “Asking as your friend, not your boss — how was your week?”

“It really was good,” Liam says, laying plates all along Niall’s massively long table. ( _Straight from Mullingar’s finest mead hall,_ he always boasts when a newcomer inevitably asks about the ancient slab of wood in the middle of his otherwise posh and minimalistic Dublin flat.) “Archie got over his flu, and Sarah got the promotion she was wanting.”

“Good to hear,” Louis says, “but I was asking about you, not your charges. What’d you do for fun this week?”

“Oh,” Liam says, then frowns. “I didn’t really do anything, I guess. I took a nap on Tuesday.” He clears his throat a little. “For five minutes.”

“You work too hard, Payno,” Louis sighs.

Liam shrugs. “I’ve heard that before. Don’t really know how to stop.”

The front door opens as Louis is clapping Liam on the shoulder and Harry steps in, shaking his hair out like a dog out of the bath. He sees Louis and Liam and smiles widely, bouncing over.

“H’lo,” he says, kissing Louis quickly and hugging Liam. “Freezing outside, isn’t it?”

“Dunno, haven’t been out in a while,” Louis shrugs. Liam just smiles politely — he’s still a little cautious around Harry, despite knowing him for decades now and Harry doing a heroic job of not smacking him even _once,_ even when he _really_ deserved it — and excuses himself.

“I’m gonna make him love me one day,” Harry mutters, watching Liam walk away with narrowed eyes.

“He loves you,” Louis reassures him, tugging him close by the belt loops. Thinks about it, grins. “He _has_ to love you, you’re an Earthly creation and angels _have_ to love those. It’s in the rules.”

Harry snorts. “Not what I meant.”

“Yeah, well,” Louis laughs quietly. “I think meeting him for the first time after you knocked a priest unconscious in front of him wasn’t going to go over well.”

“He was a _bad_ priest!” Harry protests. “It’s not my fault he had to be taken care of.”

Louis presses his smile into Harry’s hair, at least until Niall pokes his head around the corner and says, “Thought I heard your voice there, Hazza. Could you lend us a hand?”

“What did you do?” Harry says, putting a hand on his hip. “You look guilty.”

“I’m not guilty,” Niall says guiltily. “I was just trying a spell to make the food cook faster and it went a bit… wonky.”

“That’s because food and magic don’t mix,” Harry says primly, but he still extracts himself from Louis and follows Niall into the kitchen, Louis trailing along too. The pan is out of the oven and resting in the middle of the kitchen island, the poor thing blackened, still smoking slightly. Harry admonishes, _“Niall.”_

“What?” he cries. “Cooking is just ingredients mixed with herbs and cursing, right? That’s what I did too!”

“Most chefs don’t get their herbs from apothecaries,” Harry says mildly, “and they don’t get their curses from _Lebor Gabála Érenn.”_ Niall just grins winningly until Harry laughs, covering his eyes with his hand. “Alright, you ridiculous creature. Go on, entertain your guests, I’ll sort it.”

“Get in,” Niall says, fist pumping. “C’mon Lou, let’s go quiz Liam on made up angel rules to see if we can get him to cry again.”

Harry’s chuckles follow them out into the living room, where Eoghan has already broken into the first bottle of wine, a glass of red in everyone’s hands. There’s football on TV but no one’s really watching, too caught up in Ed’s story about the blind girl he’s meant to guide into being a cello prodigy, and how their first lessons aren’t going too incredibly well.

“I dunno if you’ve ever seen a cello up close,” Ed says seriously, his audience giggling into their glasses, “but they’re rather large, and she’s rather small. I had to prop the scroll up against the wall so it wouldn’t crush her.”

“She couldn’t be a ukulele master instead?” Louis asks, pouring himself a glass too.

“Flute, maybe?” Zayn suggests.

“I’ve got a harmonica if you’d like to borrow that,” Niall offers, laughing.

“Oh, sod off, the lot of you,” Ed says, chuckling. “She’s gonna be brilliant.”

The wine disappears slowly until Harry’s calling from the kitchen, “Food’s ready!”

It’s an odd group settled around Niall’s table, but they’re all mostly used to the weirdness now; Niall’s been having these weekly dinners for, quite literally, centuries, so the awkwardness usually wears off until another new immortal gets invited to meet the family. Liam’s at the far end, still the only angel in his regulation halo even though he’s not the only one here: Corden showed up just as Harry was bringing the revitalized chicken out to the table, and there’s Ed who’s never been much for rules, which is why he and Louis got on so well in the first place.

Next to Liam is Zayn, the only full-human sitting at the table, though Louis thinks that Zayn would at least insist on an asterisk and a footnote to that description:

_human*_

_*but with an angel-given extended lifespan, layered in so many protective spells that his fragile mortal skin can’t even be near someone with a cold without him getting all twitchy and, oh, right, he’s a prophet who can see the future._

Eoghan and Amy are in the center of the table, two of the younger Tuatha family members that Niall snuck out of the Court when they’d begged to see the outside world. Next to them is Steve, a [demigod](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.bebrfix18wb) of an entirely different type, the ends of his hair flashing turquoise in certain light, the scales tattooed on his arms blue-green and bright as he reaches for the bread basket.

Harry’s the only demon at the table, the only demon _ever_ at the table, actually, though he’s extended an invitation to Nick (on Niall’s behalf) dozens of times. Louis, deep _deep_ down (and despite what he would tell Harry if Harry ever asked), is okay with this status quo: everyone here would trust Harry with their lives, and he’s proven himself loyal and kind despite the black of his eyes a hundred times over, but a new demon amongst them might cause some to be less comfortable.

And then there’s Liam, who might side-eye Harry from time to time, and watches him carefully when he thinks Harry can’t see, but he feels relaxed enough to leave his sword with his jacket on Niall’s overburdened coat rack (and even Louis doesn’t do that; his sword stays invisible but secure in its scabbard, slung constantly across Louis’ back except when he’s sleeping)(but, as Liam had sniffed when Louis had asked,  _it's in the rules,_ no weapons among allies. Louis thinks it's adorable) _._

Demigods and angels and cryptids and magic-users the world over have gotten along for millennia, but demons tend to stick to their own circles. So, for now, it’s just Harry representing his species, just like he has done for decades and decades now.

“A toast,” Niall says, just like always, lifting his glass high. “To friends.”

“To friends!” the table cheers, and so dinner commences.

Dinner is really a stretch, though, for what this gathering should be called; only the human (Zayn) and the half-humans (Jack, when he’s here, and Stan), and the part-humans (Niall, Amy, and Eoghan), and the once-human (Harry) really _need_ food, and of that number only Zayn truly needs to eat on a regular basis. However, meeting around meals is one of those human things that somehow passed upwards to immortals, and Niall likes to cook and break out the alcohol, so they call it dinner even though it’s so much more than that.

Dinner, in reality, is a chance for them to check in, a weekly once-over that ensures they’re as safe and as happy as immortals in a human world can be. Family isn’t a word they throw around lightly; they’re all here because they choose to be, but they’re also here because the general consensus is that each of them _belongs._ There are some that are closer than others — [Amy and Eoghan](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.zatjt4av97vo) are more Niall’s brood than part of the core family, and then there’s Louis’ (and Harry’s) additions, Lottie and Fizzy and Daisy and Phoebe — but no matter what, they take care of their own.

And so that’s why Louis is supremely unsurprised when Niall drops into a chair across from him and Zayn at the table, the plates and glasses around them empty, his brows furrowed.

“Harry told me you two had a weird summoning this week,” he says, apropos of nothing, and interrupting Zayn in the middle of his meandering thought about how Bob Marley was _totally_ qualified for sainthood and how it’s a crime he wasn’t given it.

“Weird summoning?” Zayn asks, letting the Marley conversation go easier than Louis would’ve expected. Louis sighs.

“Yeah, it _was_ weird. Nothing bad, just strange,” he shrugs. “Bunch of kids in a basement in Yorkshire, and somehow they were strong enough to summon both me and Harry in the same day.”

“Maybe they had help?” Niall asks.

“Nah, don’t think so. I read through their spellbook before I burned it, but the Latin in it wasn’t even translated properly, it didn’t really make sense. So I think they just managed to accidentally use a really good spell instead of a mediocre one.”

“You know, now that you mention that,” Zayn says, “My visions this week had a lot of you and Harry in them, and they’re usually a little hard to understand but this week was even weirder.”

Niall hums, looking unsettled. “Don’t like that much.”

“I don’t either,” Zayn says.

“It’s no big deal,” Louis says soothingly, or at least an approximate version of soothingly. They’re clucking at him like mother hens as though this is his first time all alone in the big bad world. If there had been danger in that bland little Cottingham basement, Louis would have known, or Harry would have seen; between the two of them, they’ve survived a lot worse things than spotty kids playing witch in a basement.

“Just let me get the cards and do a quick look, it’ll make me feel better,” Niall says, getting to his feet. Zayn clears a space on the table, scooting aside the potato dish and the chicken bones and the fourth empty bottle of wine to make room for Niall.

They aren’t tarot cards, because Niall’s not a Seer — Stan is, and he could do an in-depth reading if he were here, even though Louis would still say that’s completely unnecessary — but the one thing Niall has deep in his bones is a well of magic, _real_ magic, and these cards help him channel what he sees in his head.

Louis’ power comes from grace, holy buckets of grace imbued in his very being; Harry’s comes from the opposite — unholiness, Louis supposes, but there’s probably a better word for it. Witches and magic users draw magic from the Earth, and they can harness it, but they don’t own it, and it’s not part of them.

For Niall, and for others like him, magic is what took his family and made them above other humans. Magic is the extra strand in his DNA, as it were, and while he can’t always control it, he _does_ always _have_ it. Ready to be drawn on, a reservoir of power. And so he made these cards by hand, ages back, to put that magic to immediate use when he needs it. One look at what his magic-imbued subconscious picked out for him and he can paint a picture of someone’s past, present, or future.

Unlike a tarot reading, he doesn’t lay out multiple cards to paint a picture; he just needs one. He shuffles the deck and swipes through, until his hand stills over the one calling to him:

He lays it out, turns it over — a water wheel.

Niall’s brow furrows again, and he puts the card back in the deck. Harry’s drifted over as well, probably seeing the confused frown on Louis’ face, and he watches quietly over Louis’ shoulder.

Niall draws again, pausing over the card that speaks to him, and flips it over: this one is a throne on fire.

“Um,” Niall says, flicking a glance up at Louis and Harry. “That’s… odd.”

“What’s odd?” Harry asks.

“Well,” Niall says, exhaling slowly. “Normally, when I pull a card for Louis, I get the same one for you, because your destinies have always been all tied up together. But this time, they were different.” He stares at the burning throne card for a moment, then puts it back in the deck and shuffles again. “Maybe I just- just did it wrong.”

He’s never done it wrong before. Harry puts his hand on Louis’ shoulder, and when Louis looks up at him he’s biting his lip, watching Niall’s hands hover over the deck. His eyes are squeezed tight as his hand passes over the deck and he stills once again, choosing a card.

“So, for Louis,” he narrates, then flips the card — the water wheel.

He nods to himself, puts the card back in the deck, shuffles and chooses again.

“For Harry,” he says, and flips a card over — the burning throne.

“That’s…” he trails off, still staring at the card he drew.

“What does that mean?” Louis asks, peering more closely at the card, the painted flames licking at the crown lying abandoned in the seat of the throne.

“Erm, it’s not one set meaning, you know,” Niall explains, scratching the back of his neck uncomfortably. He looks around, sees that everyone else besides the four of them are engrossed in a competitive game of Jenga in the living room, and then meets Harry’s eyes, looking worried. “But I keep getting one word, over and over.” He winces a little. “Betrayal.”

Zayn breathes in, a quick intake. “Oh,” he says, “that, well. That reminds me — my visions were all over the place this week, yeah? Most of them are quick flashes of what’s going to happen eventually, and I usually get a few that make no sense. But one of them,” he pauses, also looking apologetically at Harry. “Well, it can’t be true, maybe we shouldn’t worry.”

“No, wait,” Harry says, bottom lip jutting out, his eyes anxious. “I want to know, just in case.”

“Erm, okay, but remember that this doesn’t necessarily have to be literal,” Zayn cautions. He takes another breath. “I saw… well, I saw you, standing over Louis while he was lying on the ground.”

“That’s not so bad,” Louis says, hopeful. “That could mean lots of things.”  

“He had your sword,” Zayn continues, looking ruefully between them. “And he was about to use it. Against you.”

Harry’s hand clenches on Louis’ shoulder, and Louis can’t stand it.

“That’s not going to happen,” he says, point-blank. “It’s ridiculous to even think so.”

“Totally,” Zayn adds in quickly. “I could’ve seen it wrong, that happens sometimes.”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Niall says belatedly.

Harry stays quiet for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

_Marbella, Spain | February 2016_

Harry and Louis are lying in bed, stripped down to their human-glamoured skins and slumped together, warm and sweaty and sticky, wrung out and content. Louis is tracing patterns up and down Harry's spine as Harry melts against him; they're immortal but not invincible, and even angels and demons need a breather after the sorts of sins they just committed with each other. Harry’s teeth find a bruise he’d left on Louis’ neck and he bites at it lazily, darkening it so it’ll stay a little longer, even with Louis’ quick healing.

“Menace,” Louis says, and Harry grins, smile pressed to the warm bite mark.

Harry’s shifting, trying to get comfortable and also press as much of himself against Louis as possible, when his phone rings.

“Leave it,” Louis murmurs into Harry's hair, curls wild and mussed from his own fingertips.

“Mm, can't,” Harry says, stretching lazily, reaching across Louis to the bedside table where his phone is vibrating. His back muscles bunch and roll, and it’s distracting enough that it takes a moment for Louis to recognize the ringtone.

 _Sympathy for the Devil_. Nick.

“What’s up?” Harry asks, his voice lazy and sated. He tilts the phone outward a little so that Louis can hear Nick’s response, and even though he could probably hear even if Harry took the call to another room, he appreciates the gesture.

“Hey,” Nick says quickly, his voice tinny through the speaker. “We’re due for a chat. Got a moment?”

“Sure,” Harry says, grinning and pinching gently at Louis’ sides when he makes a discontent noise at his answer. “Where are you?”

“Spain. I’ll summon you, don’t worry about the address.”

“Vacationing?” Harry asks, getting slowly to his feet. Louis does too, pulling on Harry’s discarded t-shirt that sits a little too big on his shoulders, the one that says _HOT N HARD_ across the back and makes Harry giggle every time he wears it, like he’s sixteen and not a two thousand-year-old demonic entity.

“ _Was,”_ Nick huffs. “But got some news I should check into, so the parties and pretty boys can wait. Shall I give you five minutes?”

“Make it three, we’re almost ready,” Harry says, tossing his phone onto the bed. He yawns, rolls his head on his neck, and crosses to the wardrobe to pull out one of his effortlessly pretty shirts, sheer and floral and lovely. “Wonder what’s going on.”

“Mm, probably not anything good, right?” Louis asks, perching on the edge of the bed to pull his shoes on. “He usually doesn’t do business calls.”

Harry’s brow furrows but he shoves his feet into some boots, adjusting the waistband of his jeans as, suddenly, he says, “He’s pulling — grab my hand.” Louis reaches over and snags Harry’s hand, and he and Harry slam into the ground somewhere new, their knees buckling but the landing otherwise fine.

“Good, you brought Louis,” Nick says nearby. He’s prodding at a cut across his palm that’s slowly healing, a quickly-dashed summoning sigil outlined in black blood on the ground behind him. “You should both hear this.” He gets to his feet, brushing at his knees, then moves to hug them. He stops, arms outstretched, and wrinkles his nose. “Did you have to show up looking all…” he flaps his hands, “post-coital?”

“Can’t help looking like something that we are,” Harry says primly, mussing at his hair and making himself look even more ravished.

“I hate you both,” Nick says, but pulls them into brief hugs anyway.

They seem to be in the only unused patio bar in all of Spain, the beaches and restaurants around them all filled with beautiful people drinking sparkling drinks, bright strings of lights criss-crossing overhead like manmade stars, the moon making paths on the water in the background. The tables and bartops on this particular deck show sign of recent use, though, as if fifty people up and vanished into thin air in the midst of raucous debauchery. “Looks like it was a hell of a party,” Louis says.

“It was, but I convinced the staff to close it for an hour so we could talk,” Nick says airily, taking an abandoned drink from a table nearby and splashing it across the sigil, black blood smearing into a vague wet spot no one will notice later. “C’mon, take a seat.”

He leads Harry and Louis to three chairs overlooking the sea, propping his feet up on the railing. Harry shoots Louis a look and they take seats on either side of Nick, the sounds of distant music and laughter the only noise for a moment.

“I have to ask something,” Nick says. “And I don’t wanna ask, but if we don’t have a straight answer, things won’t be good. So I’m just going to come out and say it.” He’s still looking out over the water, but his jaw is tense. “Louis, your friend Liam. Did he attack one of mine a few days ago?”

Louis wants to answer automatically, to say _no_ and then maybe _hell no_ because attacking anyone without provocation, even a demon, isn’t anything he’d expect from Liam. “Not that I know of,” he says carefully. “What happened?”

“Pixie woke up in a field outside Manchester on Wednesday. Couldn’t remember anything from the night before, and when she woke all she could remember for the first few minutes was the name Liam, at least until everything else came back.”

“Is she okay?” Harry asks, concerned.

“She’s fine, taking the week off. But that can’t be tolerated, you understand,” he says, slightly apologetic as he turns his head to Louis. “I know you don’t let your ranks just run around doing what they want, and I don’t think he did it. But there are others who are willing to start a war on the assumption that he did, and there are some on your side who’ve been itching for reasons to kill demons since the first one pulled himself out of Hell a million years ago.”

“No, yeah, I know,” Louis breathes, rubbing at his temple. He knows those angels too, the ones born into their grace but who don’t have the personality for it, the ones filled with thoughts of war and redemption for perceived slights. Liam isn’t like them, he wouldn’t do this. “We definitely need to know what happened, I agree.”

“Wait, what night was it?” Harry asks, sitting up.  

“Tuesday.”

“Can’t’ve been him,” Harry says, and Louis catches his train of thought with a wave of relief. “We have dinner at Niall’s every Tuesday, Liam was there with us all night.”

“Oh, thank Abaddon,” Nick breathes out. “I wasn’t looking forward to sorting out what to do if it were true.”

“No, wasn’t him,” Louis says, relieved happiness sliding through him. “We can get more witnesses, if you need them.”

“No, Harry’s word’ll be enough,” Nick says. He slumps back, laughing once.

“Do I need to…” Harry trails off, biting at his lip.

“No, no, you don’t need to head Downstairs, I’ll handle it,” Nick says, waving his hand. He catches Louis’ eye imperceptibly, and Louis mouths _thank you._ Harry doesn’t have to go Below very often, usually just for quick reports of major problems, or when he’s being assigned new orders, but that’s rare. He doesn’t like going and Louis doesn’t like watching him go, either — he always comes back shaky and quiet, clinging to Louis for a few days like he was worried this time he wouldn’t be able to come back to Earth. “I’ll let you know if anything comes of it, but I’m sure it’ll settle.”

“Have there been other issues like that?” Louis asks. Nick doesn’t bother giving him the once-over; he stopped worrying about “passing secrets to the enemy” about the time Louis pulled one of Harry’s kinsmen and Nick’s friends, Greg, from a burning building in the Great Fire of London just before it collapsed.

Harry is an anomaly among his circles for spending time with _any_ other immortals, but Louis is an anomaly for spending time with a specific type: namely, demons, and not just petty newcomers who can be swayed into trading favors for favors, but the big leaguers, the high-rankers. Louis doesn’t much care, though — he’s handled a lot worse than some disapproving looks from the holier-than-thou crowd, and he knows by now that the only real difference between his kind and demons are the bosses they work for.

“Nah, not really,” Nick answers after a moment, his knee splayed out so it nudges Louis’. “We’ll sort this out, and things’ll settle. They always do.” He sits up, stretching. “Now, there was a pretty little thing I’d almost wheedled a soul out of before I got the call about Pixie, and I’m itching to chase him down.”

Harry chuckles, swatting Nick’s arm. “Go on, then. We’ll talk more later.”

Nick winks and closes his eyes; a minute later, he’s gone.

“Home?” Louis asks, yawning and stretching himself.

“Maybe,” Harry says, then stands and slinks to Louis’ chair, settling into his lap, his knees on either side of Louis’ thighs. “Or…”

Louis grins. “Or?”

“Or Nick said this patio is closed for an hour,” Harry says, leaning forward so his lips are next to Louis’ ear. “That gives us twenty minutes to ourselves.”

“You’re insatiable,” Louis murmurs, hands finding Harry’s hips.

Harry’s mouth brushes the sensitive place behind Louis’ ear. “Or…” he says again, a grin coloring his words. “Or I’m under the stars, next to the sea, getting to be with the love of my incredibly long life in paradise.” He lays a kiss to Louis’ neck. “Please?”

Louis doesn’t answer, but he thinks Harry’s satisfied without one when Louis lays him out on a nearby table, ripping the buttons on his Saint Laurent blouse.

 

* * *

 

_Byzantium, Roman Empire (modern day Istanbul) | AD 203_

Byzantium is rebuilding.

The Romans swept in without a single heed for damaging homes and gardens and mosques and shops, a retribution for Byzantium daring to side with a usurper instead of the Emperor. It took two years of sieging for the city to fall, and when it fell it fell hard; the Romans, satisfied with the surrender, went back home, and Byzantium was left to pick up its smoldering pieces.

But that was eight years ago, and the city was wounded, but left alive. Monuments lay broken, buildings damaged, but the people here are tough, and they won’t see their city die away like so many great civilizations before it. So they’re rebuilding, and Harry and Louis are there to help.  

(Or, well, they _were.)_

The wind blows the linen curtains up so they brush against Louis’ bare legs, the fabric billowing dramatically around him in a way that makes him feel like an emperor in his own right. Green rolling hills stretch out around him, the seven hilltops packed with people small as ants from Louis’ vantage point. Some of his angels are already there, overseeing the process and lending hands and a little heavenly grace where they can, and technically Louis is here to watch them; unofficially, he's looking forward to pitching in with the repairs. It's been a long while since he's had to do physical work, and Harry's excited to test out his (relatively) newly enhanced strength on the rubble.

Of course, to do that they have to leave their temporary living quarters, first.

Louis adjusts his tunic and ruffles at his hair, turning away from the sweet sunshine falling onto the balcony and heading back inside his and Harry’s private rooms.

“Harry,” he calls. “Will you be ready soon?”

He expects a quipped answer, or Harry emerging from the bedroom pinning a brooch to the top of his own tunic as he grins, unrepentant. Instead, he hears, “Erm, Lou?”

Louis frowns, walking towards Harry’s voice. “Yeah?”

“I, um,” Harry says, voice thrumming with panic, “I think something’s… wrong.”

"What?" 

"I don't... really want you to see." 

"Harry," Louis says exasperatedly, taking another step closer. "I've been around a long time, remember? I promise I won't scream." 

Harry doesn't answer, but a few seconds later he steps through the curtain dividing the living quarters from the sleeping area slowly, keeping his back to the wall as though he's afraid of an attack.

For a second, Louis sees why.

“Harry,” Louis gasps, “what-“

“I don’t know!” Harry cries, scrubbing desperately at his arms. “I woke up like this, it won’t go away!”

Louis steps carefully, slowly; Harry braces himself but lets Louis approach.

Harry’s skin, which was peach-creamy and flushed from the sun when they fell asleep yesterday, has gone grey overnight. Grey and red, almost, like he was laid on some embers until he baked and then was rolled in ash.

Louis’ first thought is _no._

His second thought is _is he sick? Is this an illness? A parasite? A plague?_

His third thought is _I can’t lose him again._

But, no; he looks closer, takes Harry’s hand in his and peers down at it.

And he thinks, _that's strange._

Harry's skin _is_ grey, that’s not a trick of the light, but it’s grey like clouds, or like the insides of oysters when they’re broken open, pearlescent with a sheen. Not grey like dead flesh; grey like the mist on a lake in the morning.

And the red isn’t Harry's actual skin; it’s fire, or something that flickers the same way, and it’s all contained in his veins. Yellow-red-orange like some sort of blazing blood under all the smoke.

“You can’t get sick,” he murmurs, a determined reassurance for himself as well as Harry. Demons don't catch illnesses; their bodies burn away disease faster than a fever. “This isn’t an illness.”

“Then what is it?” Harry asks. Louis flicks a glance up at him and his breath catches; Harry’s eyes are black, his eyebrows tilted in worry. It’s such a human expression, out of place with his empty-well eyes.

“I don’t know. You can’t change back?”

Harry squeezes his eyes shut, hand gripping Louis’ tightly. He lets out a breath and his shoulders slump. “No.”

“Okay,” Louis exhales. “Okay.”

He has no idea what to do; it's as though overnight Harry lost the ability to glamour himself, except how could that be possible? He hasn't cast anything, not where Louis has seen — in fact, he thought Harry's glamours might have been permanent, with his eyes being the only physical proof of his change, shining black like nightwater when his emotions rose. Sometimes his nails curved, claw-like, when he got angry. But that was it, and those little things faded away eventually, when Harry calmed down.

This is different. Louis needs help, and he thinks he know the right person for it.

“I have a friend…” Louis says. “He, well. He's good in situations like these, knows a little bit of everything. I think he can help.”

“Okay,” Harry says. It's incredible; even like this, smokeskinned and black-eyed, he's still beautiful in a way Louis doesn't understand. If they'd passed on the road as strangers, Louis would have done a double-take not for the hue of his skin, or the veins of fire, but because he's pretty like a diamond under sunlight.

But Harry hates it. He scratches idly at his forearm again as though he can scrape the smoke from himself, and Louis knows they have to find a way to fix it. So he grabs Harry’s hands, and concentrates hard on a spot of green far north of here.

Louis and Harry land just outside the little thatch of trees that Niall optimistically calls _the woods,_ the path to his home cutting through the underbrush. Louis’ sense of smell isn’t the strongest — that’s Harry’s thing, usually — but he’s the one who’s met Niall and so can pick out the traces of his scent, quicksilver and alder trees, as though he brushed one of the tree trunks with his hand as he passed. It’s a new trail, probably as recent as yesterday.

Good. That means Louis won’t have to hunt him down.

“Niall!” he calls when the outline of the castle is visible through the trees. “Get down here!”

Harry stumbles over his feet nervously as they make their way to Niall’s front door, keeping himself mostly behind Louis like a child hiding in his mother’s skirts. He grips Louis’ hand tight, and Louis tries to pass through some reassurance when he squeezes back.

The door creaks open, thick wood making way to a dim interior, and Niall leans against the doorjamb, eyebrows raised. “Well, hello stranger,” he says. “Nice of you to check in so soon after leaving.”

“Niall-“

“Just thought you mighta been dead, is all,” Niall continues loudly. “Since it’s been eighty years, and last I heard you were going back to the one place on Earth you never wanted to see again, because it reminded you too much of-“

Louis steps to the side, just a bit, and Niall stops. His eyebrows, impossibly, raise even higher. “Niall,” Louis says quietly. “Meet Harry.”

Louis can tell the exact moment Harry looks up from his feet and Niall sees the black of his eyes, because he isn’t subtle in his shock. He curses, scrambling backwards, and his hand curls around the door edge like he’s going to throw it shut.

“Wait,” Harry says, stepping out from behind Louis fully, his arm outstretched, black eyes pleading. “Please help us.”

“You said he died,” Niall says to Louis.

“He did,” Louis says. “And then he came back.”

Niall deliberates a moment longer. “And you’re safe?” Niall asks Harry. He could’ve directed that to Louis as well, like asking a handler about their pet, but he didn’t, and Louis feels a rush of affection for him for it. “You won’t give into some urge and decide we need to be eliminated?”

“I won’t,” Harry says quietly.

“I’ve been with him since I left here, Ni,” Louis promises.

Niall exhales slowly, then opens the door wide. “Alright then. Come on.”

They follow Niall down hallways and up a staircase, quiet except the sound of their shoes on the stones. After a few minutes, Harry says, barely more than a whisper, “Your home is lovely.”

Louis almost laughs, because if that’s not Harry in a nutshell — complimenting someone’s home he was nearly barred from entering — be doesn’t know what is. But he doesn’t laugh, because this is more important.

“Thanks,” Niall says, directing them up a second staircase. “Ancestral home, so it gets a bit drafty and lonesome with just me here, but.” He shrugs. “My parents lived here. Feels wrong to leave it empty.”

He pushes open the door to the library, stacks of scrolls and shelves exactly how Louis remembered. Niall turns to them, eyes appraising.

“Harry used to have a glamour, or at least that’s the best we can figure,” Louis explains. “It went away overnight, and he can’t figure out how to get it back.”

“What did you do yesterday?”

“Erm,” Louis says, shrugging. “We were in Istakhr, in the Persian Empire. Harry had a quick job, and he completed it. Jumped to Byzantium, got a room for the night, and that’s it.”

“Easy job?” Niall asks, taking a slow seat at a table and pulling a piece of parchment towards himself.

“Not really,” Harry says. “Had to tempt someone into stealing a noble’s jewel.”

“And you were given this job, you didn’t just see the opportunity and take it?” Niall looks up from where he’s scrawling notes.

Harry frowns. “No, I- I was told to do it.”

Niall nods, dropping his reed pen aside and moving to one of the shelves, rifling through the scrolls there and muttering under his breath. He pulls out one, unrolls it, starts to read and then stops, putting it back on the shelf. He picks another one, unrolls it a little, and makes a triumphant noise. “Look, here,” he says, bringing the scroll to the table. Louis snaps his finger and the candle between them catches alight, throwing the ink on the page into sharp relief. “It seems like Chinese scholars find that demons, when completing… they call them ‘Hell Deeds,’ so I’m assuming that’s like the job you did yesterday, they…” He squints and brings the scroll closer to his eyes. “They ‘take a step away from Earth, and take one step closer to Hell.’”

“So when I do these jobs, I get… _more_ demonic?” Harry asks. “They’ve already got my soul, how can I be _more_ demonic?”

“Well,” Niall says, sweeping his hand toward Harry’s new look. “I think this is how.”

“But, wait,” Louis says. “That’s sort of like us. We have- well, they’re called trophies, but they’re more like accessories. Every time we save a large number of souls, or a really important one, we get new sigils, new crowns, extra wings, stuff like that. There are usually ceremonies for those, though, they don’t just appear overnight.”

“Angels and their ceremonies,” Niall snorts, and he and Harry exchange an amused look.

 _“Anyway,”_ Louis prods, disgruntled. It’s not his fault the higher-ups are all about the pomp and the circumstance.  

“Seems like the same principle, yeah,” Niall says. “But you know how to pull your glamours on and keep all that hidden. You,” he turns to Harry, “don’t. So that’s the problem to fix, because you’re going to look less and less human the older you get and the more jobs you complete.” He claps his hands together, loud in the quiet room — a few minutes spent looking through dusty old scrolls together and he seems to have forgotten his suspicions of Harry, or at least has hidden them away a little better. Niall turns to him now, eyebrows raised. “So. Are you ready?”

As it turns out, Niall’s done this before — “Well, I’ve never taught a demon how to be a demon before, but I’ve got a little bit of experience in this area, yes.” — and so he has Harry settle onto a rug with him, cross-legged and shoulders loose.

“You’ve got to find the demon,” he says to Harry, who looks bewildered.

“But I _am_ the demon.”

“You were human first, though,” Niall says gently, as though Harry couldn’t remember that for himself. He shoots Niall an unimpressed look but then closes his eyes, exhaling slowly. Niall narrates, his voice soothing. “It’ll feel heavy, and it’ll probably be small and easy to overlook, since you’re so new.”

Harry’s shoulders rise and fall as he breathes in deeply. His hands are curled on his thighs, palm up. A few moments pass in silence, Louis holding his breath to keep from disturbing the process, Niall watching Harry closely, and nothing happens until —

“Found it,” Harry gasps, his hands clenching.

“Good,” Niall says. “That’s your center for anything non-human you want to do. Traveling, glamours, mind manipulation,” he stops for a second, as though he regrets letting that one out, “all that is stored there. For a glamour, you can either come up with one on your own, which is what you’d do to look like your human self again, or follow the image in someone else’s mind. You see desires, right?” Harry nods, eyes still shut. “When a person desires something or someone, you can follow that train of thought and form it into a glamour for yourself. Takes practice, from what I understand, but it’s possible.”

“How do I make myself look normal?” Harry asks, barely moving his lips, like he’s concentrating on keeping that center pinned in place.

“Just concentrate on what you want,” Niall says. It sounds vague to Louis, but Harry grunts like he understands and squeezes his eyes tighter.

A few seconds pass and nothing happens. Then, a wave rolls over Harry, quick and subtle, and he opens his eyes.

They’re green.

“You did it!” Louis gasps. Harry looks down at his arms, smoky-grey hidden by his usual ivory skin, and whoops.

“I did it!” he says excitedly, bouncing to his feet. Niall grins, standing as well.

“Aye, you did, well done. You should practice, it’ll make you quicker.” He shrugs, nonchalant. “I can help make it easier, long as you’re here.”

Harry shoots a pleading glance at Louis, who shrugs. “I don’t have any jobs lined up, neither do you. We could stay for a while, if you’d like.” He nods to Niall. “If that’s okay.”  

Niall’s grin widens. “Fine by me.”

Harry bounces on his toes again, then settles back down on the rug, shaking out his arms. A few moments later, his glamour slips away again, his skin growing grey and cloudy once more.

“How’d you know all this?” Louis murmurs to Niall, hoisting himself up so he’s perched on the end of the table, the scroll Niall found earlier still rolled out behind him. Harry’s slowly changing himself back and forth, concentrating hard; sometimes he gets it a little wrong, like his hair going a little too light or his limbs a little too long, and he grits his teeth and tries again.

“Had a friend, once,” Niall shrugs. “Werewolf, not a demon, but same basic concept — used to be a human, then was turned. I helped him figure out how to control the change.”

After a while, Louis starts rifling through the shelves, picking out a scroll that looks interesting and settling at the table. Niall goes back to helping Harry, voice soft as he suggests different things for Harry to try (“Can you make your hair blonde? Okay, can you do brown eyes? Now blue. That’s excellent, lad.”). It’s warm and cozy in Niall’s little library, and hours pass without Louis realizing.

Dinner is a quick affair, since Louis doesn’t really need to eat and it’s just the three of them, and then they trot back upstairs. When they enter the library, Niall says, “If you’d like, I can teach you how to channel a glamour into a talisman.”

“What, like an amulet or something?” Harry asks.

“In a way. It’s easier to wear a ring or a bracelet as opposed to continuously keeping a glamour on all the time. Do you have anything we could use for that?”

Harry looks down at his empty wrists and fingers, shrugging. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his tunic and makes a noise of surprise. “I’ve got…” he says, fishing for something, “oh. A drachma.” The silver coin flashes in his palm, the Greek etchings barely visible.

Louis looks over and sees Harry looking back, and he knows they’re both thinking the same thing: those games they used to play back in Elis, shamming and entertaining the nobles and walking away with pocketfuls of coins to spend on sweets and trinkets. Louis winks, and Harry grins a little. He holds the coin out to Niall, who says, “That’ll work.”

A hole is punched through the drachma and it’s threaded onto a cord, long enough Harry can wear it around his neck and hide it under his clothes, if needs must. Niall shows him how to summon the glamour into his fingers and pass it along to whatever — or whoever — he’s touching, and he immediately turns and pokes Niall, who has a wave of energy roll over him, turning him into an exact replica of Harry.

“Very funny,” he says, but he’s biting back a grin. The light lilt of his voice is strange in Harry’s mouth, his expression strange on Harry’s face. He taps himself in the chest and the glamour disappears. “You’ll have to be stronger than that to turn me into another one of you permanently.”

“Will that happen?” Harry asks, eyes narrowed as he concentrates on the drachma in front of him. He touches it and it glows purple for a moment, then back to silver. “Getting stronger?”

“I don’t know for sure, of course,” Niall says. “But logic follows that the more deeds you rack up, and the more… demonic you are, I suppose, the stronger you’d be. That’s how it is for you, right, Lou?”

“Mhm,” Louis confirms. “Human-born angels start with a minimal amount of power, just in case they’re tempted into abusing it.”

“But eventually,” Niall says. Harry squeezes his eyes shut and his current glamour fades away, leaving him grey-skinned and black-eyed once more, “I’d assume your center would grow so that it’s not so small. In fact, I think, at some point the part of you that’s fully human might be the smallest part of you, hidden away like your demon center is now.”

He slides the cord around Harry’s neck and the glamour slips into place, grey-fire skin hidden under a human facade.

“Well,” Niall says, brushing off his hands as he steps back. “Suppose that’s all I can do.”

“Thank you, Niall,” Harry says solemnly, thumb running around the edge of the drachma on his chest.

“You could stay, if you wanted,” Niall offers casually, half-turning away. “I’d have to bring more food in, I’m almost out, and you know the place gets chilly at night, and there’s a storm coming, so the weather won’t be too pleasant-“

Harry flicks his gaze up to Louis and they share a smirk, ignoring Niall as he lists off reason after reason for Louis and Harry _not_ to stay with him for a while even though he clearly wants them to.

“Niall,” Harry interrupts, grinning. “We can stay.”

Niall’s face lights up and then he schools it away badly, pretending he’s unexcited at the prospect. “Oh, fine.”

Louis throws his arm over Niall’s shoulders, wrapping the other around Harry’s waist and leading them from the library. “Oh please,” he laughs. “You’ve invited us in, you’re never getting rid of us now.”

Niall groans, but they’re all laughing as they tumble into one of the sitting rooms, Niall waving his hand so a spark catches on the pile of firewood waiting in the grate. They fall asleep warmed by never-quenched fire, piled together like puppies instead of the immortal, eternal beings they actually are.

 

* * *

 

_London, England | February 2016_

In two millennia together, Louis and Harry have never been married.

At least, not in the human sense.

There’s just no need for it; there would be no reason for the two of them to bind themselves under man-made law, then stand in line at the Passport Office to change their surnames (especially since Harry’s been officially declared dead for about two thousand years, and Louis’ full name, titles included, is fifty-eight words long and includes three non-human languages).

But there are weddings, or at least moments that don’t really match any other description.

A beach in Barbados, on the sands near the Nile, a rickety church on the plains of the American West. Harry’s favorite was the first one, when Louis slid a ring onto his finger that he’d bought in the Babylon markets that day, when he whispered _don’t go, stay with me forever_ and Harry answered _of course, always._ Louis’ favorite was the quiet High Altar in Westminster Abbey the night before one of the royal weddings — Elizabeth’s, he’s pretty sure; it was fine, she owed him one — he and Harry murmuring fervent declarations under stained glass darkly lit with moonlight, their kisses hot and fierce and quick, because they only had about five minutes between guard rotations.

Secret ceremonies under the cover of night are more powerful than governmental bodies granting two people permission to be together. Vows pressed into each other’s skin are more binding than the kind declared to a minister.

Especially when the words Louis paints across the swell of Harry’s ribs make him _arch,_ hands twisted in the sheets.

“I love you,” Louis whispers, kissing it like a tattoo along Harry’s forearm. “I love you,” in the middle of his palm. “I love you,” at his sensitive hips.

“Louis,” Harry gasps, throwing his head back.

In a hundred thousand years, Louis could never get enough of having Harry underneath him, pliant and sweet and begging. It’s the innocence of his expression, eyes closed and lips parted on a breath, mixed with the knowledge that, if he wanted, he could throw Louis across the room and take what he wanted and Louis would have a hard time getting away.

But he _lets_ Louis have his way, and that’s what’s beautiful about it.

The windows of their flat are flung open wide; it’s a calm night in London, rain distant on the horizon and the breeze cool. Harry doesn’t seem to mind the chill — goosebumps pebble across his chest, his arms, drying the sweat in the hollow of his throat. The sheets are twisted around his legs, and he’s a tableau of soft curves and a hard jaw, sweet and sharp like the clean sweep of a sickle.

Louis hoists Harry’s thighs over his shoulders and runs the tip of his tongue along the vein of his cock, tracing a pattern that has his hips jumping, at least until Louis thinks _be still_ and Harry answers with an audible whimper.

Louis rubs his cheek against Harry’s inner thigh, the stubble length he’s perfected over thousands of years scratching against Harry’s sensitive skin. The muscles under his cheek clench but otherwise Harry stays perfectly still, fists squeezing the sheets.

“Ready, darling?” Louis murmurs, and Harry doesn’t have a chance to answer before Louis has slid his mouth around the head of Harry’s cock, scraping his teeth as lightly as possible on the little bundle of nerves under the head. Harry cries out, voice echoing in the otherwise silent room, and Louis hums to himself as he slides down further, further. The humming works Harry up even more, stomach shaking with the effort of holding still.

Louis snaps the fingers of his free hand and the bottle of lube from his bedside table appears next to him. He slicks three fingers and slides two in, enjoying Harry’s hiss of surprise. If he was human, Louis might’ve taken longer — fortunately for them, he’s not, and their bodies heal so intrinsically that sometimes pushing them to their limits is half the fun.

Another finger in, and Louis finds Harry’s prostate with the tip of his middle finger as he takes Harry down all the way to the base. Harry shouts, voice cracked like old marble, and tugs at Louis’ hair.

“Please, please,” he’s begging, and so Louis hollows his cheeks, lets the edge of his canines graze Harry’s dick for that _taste_ of pain he loves so much, and presses all three fingers hard against his prostate.

Harry’s eyes fly open and he comes with a vengeance, hips bucking and arms corded with tension where they’re slowly ripping claw marks in the sheets.  

“Good?” Louis asks, and Harry grins hazily. He stretches and lets his legs spread a little more, so Louis takes that as permission. He slides a fourth finger in next to the other three, the muscle tight around his fingers. Harry’s making contented little noises, legs jerking when Louis circles his prostate.

Louis pulls his fingers out and slicks his cock with the lube still lying nearby, then pulls Harry’s legs back over his shoulders again. Harry’s pliant and willing, hands gripping at Louis’ forearms so hard he can feel the bruises forming, palm-shaped marks that, if he’s lucky, won’t fade away for a day or so.

He maneuvers Harry so that only his shoulders are touching the bed, his back arched outwards in an obscene curve. And, speaking of obscenity, his cock is fully hard again, a bead of precome sliding down the shaft.

The demonic refractory period is… something else.

“Remember the first time we did this?” Louis murmurs, pressing in achingly slowly until his hips are flush against Harry’s bum.  The pressure is hot and heady, and his head spins a bit at the tight squeeze.  

Harry makes another noise, this one more conversational. “Kyoto,” he says, breathless and wonderful.

“That’s right,” Louis agrees, sliding back and thrusting forward again, rolling his hips into a smooth rhythm.

“ _Shit,”_ Harry breathes, heels sliding against Louis’ back. Louis’ stomach swoops — he takes a lot of pride (it’s a sin, but it’s not so bad, as sins go) in things he’s accomplished here on Earth, but there’s nothing so sweet as knowing he was the one to wring a sound like that out of Harry. _“Louis.”_

“I’m here, love,” Louis says, his own voice gone ragged. Hoists Harry a _little_ higher, sweaty skin slippery against his fingertips. He’s now in nearly a full backbend, the very tops of his shoulders barely brushing the mattress, his weight resting on his forearms.

Rebound time for immortals can be legendarily quick, but stamina is not one of their gifts: Louis feels the orgasm already tugging at the heavy, thudding weight building low in his hips. Harry’s no better, noises gone high and tight and constant, his pounding pulse like a drumbeat that Louis matches his thrusts to.

Harry comes with a sob, face screwed up in pleasure so deep it waves out of him like an aura. Louis follows after another few thrusts, pulled headlong into a swooping, careening rush of endorphins and chemicals in his blessed blood, sparking and snapping like electricity in water.

Harry lets himself slowly fall back onto the bed, chest moving quickly with deep, satisfied breaths. Louis snaps his fingers and the lube goes back to where it belongs; Harry waves a lazy hand and the rips in the sheets repair themselves, the come dripped across his stomach is wiped away. Louis wraps himself around Harry, his nose pressed to the nape of Harry’s neck, and he runs his hand from Harry’s shoulder to his elbow to his palm, lacing their fingers together. He hears the sleepy flutter of Harry’s eyelashes against the cotton of the pillow, the way he’s fighting to stay awake. The world outside their wide, flung-open windows is quiet, brushed navy and pink from car headlights and neon signs.

“This is all I’ll ever need,” Harry murmurs. “You’re all I need for the rest of eternity.”

Harry and Louis have never gotten married. They’ve never celebrated an anniversary — why would they, when all that is meant to do is break up forever into measurable pieces?

But they have this: night-lit promises, mingled sweat and blood and joy. A centuries-long honeymoon painted with poison and sulfur and angel grace. Who could need more than this? Who could ask for more than what Harry has given?

Eternity.               

 

* * *

 

_Kunduz, Ghurid Empire (Present day Afghanistan) | AD 1201_

Smoke burns at Louis’ eyes but he can't feel it, the itching inconsequential as he barrels from room to deserted room, sidestepping patches of fire licking at the floors and walls.

“Harry!” he calls, projecting his voice over the roar of the flames.

“In here,” Harry shouts back from somewhere to his left. Louis turns towards his voice and takes off at a run, still avoiding puddles of holy fire.

Ironic that a monastery going up in flames is probably the least safe place in the universe for an angel, and yet that's where Louis finds himself. Holy oil consecrated by monks with pure souls and then set ablaze is one of the only things that could actually kill Louis, besides a specific set of highly secret, incredibly difficult spells or an angelic sword through his chest.

Still. He and Harry had seen smoke pouring out of a building, heard the screams and the terror, and they couldn't just ignore it, so here he is.

Louis takes a running leap and flares his wings wide, the sweep of nightfeathers extinguishing some of the smaller fires with a rushing, sudden wind. Harry careens into the room from another doorway, holding a small, soot-covered person in his arms.

“He's alive, but only just,” Harry says, his [čūḵa](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.1kslgs2xy54g) soaked through with sweat. “Can you get us out of here?”

If it was just the two of them, Louis would teleport them out without a problem. But he can feel the weakness of the little golden soul in the body held close to Harry's chest, and he doesn't know if an already frail mortal would survive the jump. So he nods to Harry and leads the way out, calling winds out of the air and carving a path for them out of the flames. They're deep in the monastery, among the small maze of rooms where the monks sleep, but they keep a quick pace as the smoke thickens around them. He glances back and sees that somewhere in the chaos of the fire Harry lost his glamoured necklace, so his skin blends with the hazy grey around them, and his worried eyes are blacker than the scorch marks on the walls.

A glance out a window they eventually pass tells Louis they somehow need to get to the ground floor, which is almost certainly fully engulfed in flames. He stops and kicks a hole through some weakened floorboards, crouching and peering through the jagged edges.

“Not far,” he tells Harry. “You go first, I’ll hand the child down.”

Harry lays the body — a little boy, shivering and sweating but unconscious — into Louis’ arms and leaps through the hole, landing with a thud in the entrance hall to the monastery, about fifteen feet below Louis. The fire stretches out towards him like wanting arms, but his expression is determined. “Ready!”

Louis, carefully as possible, lowers the boy down through the hole right over Harry, then, after exchanging a quick nod, lets go. Harry catches the boy and curls him close to his chest once more, stepping close to Louis when he leaps through the hole and blasts a path to the front door. Louis’ nervousness makes the winds gale-force, rattling the single shutter that hasn’t fallen to the ground in a pile of ash, but it does the trick at tamping down the flames, and that’s what matters.

They burst out of the monastery just as something inside the building gives way, a beam or something large and important-sounding cracking loudly, and a portion of the building collapsing outward. Louis pulls Harry and the boy in his arms out of danger and towards the small crowd of swāmis and scribes watching their home burn.

“ _[تشکر](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.srfffz2e8mp2)_ ,” one of the monks says, rushing over to Harry and Louis. He pulls the boy from Harry’s arms and passes him to another swāmi, who immediately lays him on a mat and starts wiping the soot from his forehead. “ _تشکر_ , thank you,” the swāmi says again.

Louis’ Dari is rusty, but he brings the basics to the forefront of his mind and bows a little. When he straightens up again, he asks, “Is everyone safe?”

“Yes, yes,” the man says, “thanks to you, everyone made it out alive.”

It takes Harry’s panicked thought pressing against the edge of his mind to remind Louis that his wings are flared and wide from angelic adrenaline, and that Harry still doesn’t have any glamours on, his drachma coin necklace burning somewhere in the building behind him. The swāmi doesn’t look worried, though, or at least more worried than could be expected from a man whose home is on fire. In the background, men and boys alike are rushing into formation, pulling buckets of water from a well in the courtyard and passing them along, slowly extinguishing the fire at the front of the building.

“We can help,” Louis offers, nodding towards the group.

“We would appreciate anything you could offer,” the man says gratefully, then flicks his glance to Harry. “Either of you.”

Louis takes a moment to exchange a surprised look with Harry — ultra religious types, even those raised in peace, don’t often react this well to seeing a demon casually in their midst — but there’s too much to do to dwell on it. Louis stays out with the men by the well, funneling water into their buckets faster than they could ever pull it out by hand. Harry follows a group of men inside, shifting rubble to smother the flames, propping up any half-fallen walls. It takes hours, but eventually the fire has been put out, and there’s nothing left to do except wait for morning, when rebuilding will become possible.

“We will be setting up temporary camp tonight, if you would like to stay,” the swāmi says, offering a cloth to Harry for him to wipe away grime from his arms and hands. Before Louis can answer, another man runs up to the three of them.

“Yusuf is awake,” he says in an undertone.

The swāmi smiles, and gestures to Harry and Louis. “If you have a moment, would you like to speak to the boy you saved? I’m sure he would appreciate the chance to thank you.”

The little boy, Yusuf, looks unbearably fragile under the night sky, his mat set apart from the bustling crowd erecting tents and starting small campfires to ward off the night chill. He’s awake, though, wide brown eyes soot-smudged and innocent as he sees Harry and Louis approach, only widening a little when he sees the grey-fire of Harry’s skin, the wings flared behind Louis’ shoulders.

“Yusuf is our youngest here at the _mathas,”_ the swāmi says, smiling down at the boy. “Our little troublemaker.” Louis takes a seat by Yusuf’s mat and Harry, carefully, does the same. The swāmi smiles again and backs away, bowing.

“Thank you for saving me,” Yusuf says, coughing a little. His heartbeat is fast but healthy, and his soul still glows bright gold in his chest. Louis worries for every human — an occupational hazard now, after Elis — but Yusuf seems tough as the hardy trees growing along the mountainsides, thin and reedy and strong.

“It was no trouble,” Harry says, which is an understatement, but Louis just grins in agreement. Yusuf reaches out a little hand and rubs at Harry’s skin.

“Did the fire do this?” he asks.

Harry stills, as though he thought he’d gotten away without his and Louis’ obvious inhumanities being pointed out. “No, it didn’t,” he answers carefully.

“So you’re an angel too?” Yusuf asks, eyes shining.

Louis coughs a laugh, nudging Harry’s side. He’s slowly leaning back as though expecting Yusuf to start screaming — though, of course, in the few times over the past few centuries that humans _did_ see Harry’s Form, screaming wasn’t out of the ordinary, so maybe he’s not wrong to do so — but something in Yusuf’s expression tells Louis this isn’t one of those times.

“Not exactly,” Harry hedges.

“But you’re good,” Yusuf says, still rubbing a little thumb on Harry’s forearm. “You’re not an angel but you’re good, because you saved me.”

“Yes,” Louis agrees before Harry has a chance to dispute that. “He is good.”

Harry shoots him a look but Yusuf doesn’t notice; he’s reaching out with his other hand and touching the sigil wrapped like a bracelet around Louis’ wrist, still glowing softly.

“Oh,” Louis says when their hands brush. Harry makes an inquisitive noise, and Louis looks up to meet his questioning look. “He’s a prophet.”

“Yes,” Yusuf says, even though Louis had barely spoken above a whisper. “That’s what Raja says.” He looks at the swāmi still standing nearby, who inclines his head as if he knows what they’re discussing.

“That’s a very special job,” Louis tells him.

“I know,” Yusuf tells him right back. Harry chuckles.

They talk with Yusuf for several minutes, his sentences interrupted by smoky coughs only a few times, and then Raja is approaching once more.

“You should sleep,” he tells Yusuf, then he turns to Harry and Louis. “We have extra mats, if you will be staying.”

“You can sleep next to me!” Yusuf says happily, and neither Harry nor Louis is strong enough to deny that, so they take the offered mats and follow Yusuf, who claims he knows the best place on the whole mountainside. “I come here sometimes when it’s too hot in the _mathas,”_ he tells them, stepping nimbly up to a flat, wide boulder a little ways from the rest of the camp.

He rolls out his mat and instructs Louis and Harry to do the same on either side of him, with the kind of imperiousness only an eight-year-old could muster. Louis finds himself tucking away grins, reminded of his little sisters early on after their creation, sweet and proud and headstrong all rolled into one.

“This is no good,” Yusuf says in disappointment after a few moments, he, Harry, and Louis all lying on their backs staring up at a clouded sky. Smoke from the smoldering remains of the monastery swirls like heavy fog overhead. “We can’t see the stars.”

“Hmm,” Louis says. “I’ll see if I can fix that.”

His wings are tucked away once more, invisible to the world, but he doesn’t need them to stir up a bit of wind; he calls the breeze sliding over the mountaintop and angles it toward the monastery, sweeping away the smoke. He’s so busy concentrating on controlling the wind so it doesn’t conjure up a dust storm that he almost misses Harry’s intake of breath, Yusuf’s happy sigh.

“There they are,” Yusuf says, wiggling a little on his mat.

Louis lets the power fade from his fingertips and finally looks up, and he suddenly loses his breath as well.

He’s an all-powerful angel, immortal and imbued with the grace of Heaven and the love of the host, but he’s never felt more insignificant than he does right now under an eternal sky. The stars, somehow, seem closer here, and there are more of them than what feels like should be possible, so many that the darkness between them glows rosy red and and pale green rather than the black expanses seen anywhere else.

Harry leans towards Yusuf, whispering, “Louis is the angel in charge of the stars, did he tell you that?”

Yusuf’s little hand worms itself into Louis’, his palm warm and tiny like a little star of his own plucked out of the sky.

Louis lets out a slow breath and squeezes Yusuf’s hand. He didn’t create this masterpiece, he was just assigned to it, told to watch over it, protect it; his wings were drenched with starlight, but he didn’t have a hand in that, either.

Still, when Yusuf whispers, “Thank you for letting us have them,” he can’t help but feel a rush of warmth anyway, as though the stars sprang fully-formed from his hands.

“You’re welcome,” he says quietly, and when he rolls his head to look at Harry over the top of Yusuf’s head, Harry smiles back at him.

They fall asleep there under the path of stars so bright it’s like a line of lanterns directly over their heads, dust and gas and skyfire burning brightly and lighting up the world around them. Yusuf’s hands stay tucked in Harry’s on one side, Louis’ on the other, and his little golden soul competes with the stars for the brightest light in the land.  

                                                                                     

* * *

 

_Dublin, Ireland | March 2016_

Family dinner that week stretches longer than usual, late into the night until it turns over into morning, Dublin painted with the soft glow of nighttime outside Niall’s windows.

Once in a blue moon, Bressie tries to bribe Niall into coming home by sending gifts, stacks and stacks of expertly-forged weapons and hand-crafted wooden furniture and knick-knacks, tempting bits of the Tuatha world Niall left behind.The flat is littered with it all — he even has an entire room stockpiled with all the sets of armor Bressie has sent him over the years — but Louis knows he likes the reminder that someone misses him, and he wouldn't ever send any of it back. The clear consummate winner among the gifts, however, is always the last package Bressie sends along, the same thing every time: ten bottles of the purest faerie-drink. Liquor so sweet and so strong that a drop in a glass of wine would knock a human unconscious.

But it doesn’t take much for immortals and ancient beings, either, so Niall doesn’t break the good stuff out very often.

Louis’ head swims pleasantly; he hasn't had too much, just a single glass of faerie-spiked whisky. They don't have designated drivers amongst them, because their blood won't hold the alcohol long enough for that to be an issue (plus none of them actually drive, though drinking and teleporting might be just as disastrous), but he still likes to stay more towards the sober end of the spectrum when everyone else is completely, utterly sloshed.

And, speaking of the inebriated devil-

“Louuuuu,” Harry half-sings, dipping the name up and down like a rollercoaster. “S’empty, look.” He holds out his glass, which is definitely not empty, and goes to tip it from side to side.

“No, nope,” Louis says, reaching out to snatch the tumbler just before Harry dumps half of it in his lap. He hides it from Harry’s line of sight for a moment, then brings it back into view completely unchanged. “Here you go.”

“You’re my hero,” Harry says, sipping contentedly. Louis grins, then refocuses on everyone else.

Jade, one of Ed’s fellow principalities — Ed is the patron of music, while Jade is the patron of art, but there’s enough crossover between those two that they work together all the time — has her own glass of faerie-spiked wine in hand, the other waving widely as she tells a story that has the rest of the group in stitches.

“She’s bound and determined to sculpt this millennium’s David, yeah?” she says, the Geordie accent she picked up after decades spent training a reclusive painter in South Shields even thicker from the drink. “And that’s all well and dandy, except she needed a model. So I search, and search,” she says, eyes wide, “for _months,_ wey aye? And find one, prettier than anything, bring him back to her expecting she can, yanno. Start this world-changing masterpiece.”

“She didn’t?” Niall asks, smile spread wide across his face in anticipation, as though he's already heard this story and knows how it ends.

“Nae!” Jade denies, sloshing a bit of wine on her hand as she gestures wildly. “Came back three days later and they’re not clothed, but they’re not doing any sculpting, either.”

Her listeners roar with laughter, Ed’s face rosy as he tilts his head back, Amy and Eoghan in stitches on the rug next to the fireplace. Harry bubbles a laugh into Louis’ shoulder, heading lolling so he can see Jade where she's perched on the arm of Steve’s chair.

“At least you made her happy, right?” Liam offers, but even he’s bright-eyed with laughter.

“Aye, and at what cost?” Jade cries, taking a swig from her glass. “By the time she’s done with him, he’ll be too old to pass as David anymore, though he's doing a bang-up job of it now.”

“That good, eh?” Zayn asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I divvin’ say this lightly,” Jade says, raising her own eyebrows back at him, “but he’s built like a Greek god.”

“Ugh,” Louis says, waving his hand before letting it settle back into Harry’s hair, separating out a curl and twirling it around his finger. “As someone who has met and worked extensively with all the Greek gods, can I suggest we strike that phrase from the communal vocabulary? Most of _them_ were built like middle-aged dads with beer bellies.”

“Also,” Harry pipes in, words syrup slow as they tumble out of his mouth, “as someone who was born actually, you know... _Greek_ , I resent that I’ve never _once_ been compared to a god. Greek or otherwise.”

Everyone laughs again, spirits making them loose and giddy, and then the conversation turns once more, meandering on. Everyone, that is, except Liam, who sends Harry some sort of look Louis is too dizzy to identify right now, though he knows it’s not friendly, beyond even the usual caution.

Now that his attention has been caught, Louis watches Liam for another few minutes. He’s slow with drink, heavy-limbed and a little careless, but he’s single-minded as ever: when Harry makes a comment, or laughs, or shifts against Louis, or does anything to remind Liam he’s still there, Liam’s eyes narrow as though Harry’s a snake about to strike.

It chafes at Louis, even though he knows Harry’s too drunk to notice. It doesn’t matter — he brought Liam into this family, because Liam was a good man and now he’s a great angel, and he knew Liam needed the family as much as the family needed a stable, steady presence. But Harry’s just as much a part of the family too, despite the black of his eyes or the sin in his soul; Liam’s decades among them at family dinners are nothing compared to the thousands of years Harry has been here, peacefully coexisting with angels and demigods and more without a single problem.

A part of Louis wants to shout, to stand and scream and make Liam admit that he knows Harry is good, that he’s just as worthy of being here as anyone else, but he’s still clear-headed enough to know just how terribly that would go. He doesn’t want to fight, anyway, and there would be uncomfortable splits and factions among them if Louis and Liam suddenly weren’t able to get along anymore. Niall would be torn, and Amy and Eoghan would follow him, and even though Louis was the first to lay a blessing on Zayn’s bones so that he wouldn’t age and could stay with them forever, he knows that Zayn’s loyalty leans more towards Liam these days.

No, he needs more information, and he spots his chance when Ed gets to his wobbly feet, mumbling about a refill. Louis slips out from under Harry and follows Ed to the kitchen.

“Oh, hey there Lou,” Ed says, nodding. “More to drink?”

“None for me, thanks,” Louis says, then leans close, knowing Liam’s hearing is just as good as his own, and that if he tried, he could hear every word of this if Louis isn’t careful. “Got a question, though. What’s going on with Liam?”

“Ah,” Ed says, looking a little uncomfortable. “Right. You haven’t heard?”

That’s ominous. “Heard what?”

“There’s, erm. A bit of a rumor going around, is all. Most of us don’t believe it, of course,” Ed reassures him, but Louis’ trepidation is still rising. “But you know how Liam is. A bit overprotective.”

“I know how he is,” Louis agrees. “But what’s the rumor?”

Ed rubs at the space between his eyes. “Someone is saying that they have proof that Harry took one of ours. An angel in Liam’s regiment, actually. He’s been missing a couple of weeks.”

“Took him?” Louis asks, baffled. “Took him where?”

“Like, _took him._ Below.”

“Liam thinks Harry kidnapped an angel and took him to Hell?” Louis asks incredulously. “Seriously?” Something about that pings something else in his mind, but right now he’s too frustrated to chase down that thought.

Ed shrugs. “Shall I…”

“Yeah,” Louis sighs, rubbing at his own temple. “Send Liam in here.”

Liam appears a few moments later, weaving the careful walk of someone who knows he’s had too much to drink. “What’s up, Louis?”

“Heard something a little unpleasant, actually,” Louis says, still speaking in a lowered voice so he doesn’t attract any attention. He’s sure Ed’s listening in just in case he needs to rush in, but he’d like to keep everyone else out of it, if possible. _Especially_ Harry. “Apparently you think Harry’s an angel killer now.”

“No!” Liam disputes automatically, then hesitates. “I mean-“

“Liam!” Louis hisses. “That’s _not_ okay! Harry has never so much as _frowned_ at an angel, let alone _hurt_ one.”

Liam’s shoulders are high and tight, his expression shuttered. “But-“

“No,” Louis says. “Listen to me. Harry is more than the demon blood inside of him. He’s _good,_ and every single immortal out there would vouch for him.” Liam still looks unsure, but his certainty is wavering, so Louis goes for the metaphorical jugular. “And he _loves_ you, Liam. He thinks you’re amazing, and he wants to spend time with you without having to deal with your glare the entire time.”

Liam’s shoulders slump. “I know. I mean, I’ve always known that he must be trustworthy, or he wouldn’t be here. But I heard that Andy was missing, and someone was saying it was Harry who did it, and I didn’t bother taking the time to judge that for myself.”  

“Well, maybe next time you should,” Louis says, clapping Liam’s shoulder. “Just ask, that’s all you have to do.”

“Right,” Liam says, scratching at the back of his neck. “Sorry, boss.”

Louis rolls his eyes, but shoves lightly at Liam’s shoulder when he sees his careful grin. “C’mon. It’s about time to wrap up this party, and I know you’ve got a ten minute nap to take.”

Liam laughs and follows Louis out to the living room, where they shake Steve and Lottie awake, and usher the rest of their drunken friends out the door, wringing promises out of them that they'll check in (by text or by long distance telepathy, whatever they can manage) when they get home.

It’s not until he’s carried Niall to bed and sent Liam home that Louis remembers what it was that reminded him of Ed’s rumor. Liam himself had been accused just a few weeks ago of taking a demon and hurting them, and now the same has happened to Harry. It’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility — Heaven and Hell have been at each other’s throats forever, so sometimes flare-ups happen — but it’s odd to have two incidents back to back within a month.

Louis hauls Harry up off Niall’s couch and blinks, their flat materializing around them, and makes a note to himself to keep his ears and eyes peeled for anything weird or out of the ordinary.

Surely, he thinks sleepily, tucking himself around Harry’s sleeping form, this is the last of the weirdness they’ll have to deal with for a good long while.

 

* * *

 

_Jackson Heights, Queens, New York | 1981_

Louis is sprawled across his sofa, doing a whole lot of nothing as _Coronation Street_ plays in the background just for some noise, when the phone on the table by the door rings shrilly. He hops up and brushes off his jeans, tugging the waistline back up to the dip of his hips where it belongs.

“H’lo,” he says, leaning against the wall. He and Harry had sprung for the phone with the extra-long cord so they could lounge on the couch and still talk for hours — Niall gets bored sometimes but cross-ocean telepathy can give him headaches — but his legs are achy from sitting so long, so it feels good to stand for a bit.

“Lou,” Lottie’s voice comes through the headset, the connection a little crackly. She must be calling from her Malibu apartment, then; he can almost picture it, Barbie-bleached hair pulled up in a high half-pony, bright pink scrunchie, checking the glittered nails on her hand as she wraps the phone cord around her finger. “Busy?”

“Are they charging by the word, now?” Louis teases. “How was your day? How’s California?”

Lottie sighs long-sufferingly, but Louis can hear her grin all the way across the world. “Good, and good. It’s warm today, so I took Fizzy out to the beach.”

“Good,” Louis says, nodding. The two of them are stationed in the States to watch over the changing of the guard, more or less; the Center for Disease Control is about to issue a [report](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.4q7qbip06ajf) that will change the world forever, and Lottie and Fizzy have thousands of guardian angels who are going to be panicking when the men they’re trying to protect are hit with something they can’t fix. “You deserve a good day.”

“Thanks, I agree,” Lottie says lightly. “But anyway, I was calling to check on your schedule. What’s your next month or so look like?”

“Mm, don’t have much on,” Louis says. Next to him, the door to the flat opens and Harry lets himself in, smiling hello at Louis and swooping to kiss his cheek, then sliding past him to head into the kitchen. He switches the kettle on, then leans out of the doorway and silently asks Louis if he’d like a cuppa. Louis nods, then turns his attention back to Lottie. “Why?”

“Got a new recruit,” Lottie says, and Louis perks up. The human population has consistently been growing at a ridiculous rate, which means the rate of guardian angels they bring into the fold is increasing as well, but it’s still not an everyday occurrence. It takes a special type of human to live the way it takes to become a guardian when they die, and very few make the cut. “Can you handle him?”

“Where is he?” Louis asks. Harry brings out a cup of tea and passes it to Louis, sipping at his own and leaning against the opposite wall.

“Queens,” Lottie tells him. “New York.”

When they ring off — after Harry shouts “Love you, Lottie!” towards the phone and Lottie, laughing, tells Harry she loves him too — Louis throws back the rest of his tea and curls his hands into the lapels of Harry’s jean jacket. “How do you feel about the Big Apple?” he asks, and Harry’s eyes light up in excitement.

 

 

But, of course, even the brightest city in the world has its [problems](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.oyq0o32a5sw7). Harry and Louis find a quiet, cheap place to rent for the next month in Jackson Heights, and when Louis sets out to find his new charge he’s able to see the wreckage left behind after the economic mess of the last decade. Cars are up on blocks out in front of nearly every home, some of them with pieces of cardboard taped to the windscreens claiming NO RADIO INSIDE so the windows won’t be busted in for no reason. Graffiti coats the brick walls of alleyways and storefronts. Men and women huddle on street corners, under bridges; Louis passes them the cash in his wallet, duplicating his bills over and over so he can leave no hand empty, but he recognizes those shaky, addiction-pang expressions and wishes he could do something more substantial.

It’s in a similar spot, not two blocks from Harry and Louis’ new temporary place, that Louis sees the new angel. He’s crouched down in front of a young woman, her hair lank and unkempt, a sleeping bag around her shoulders like a blanket even though it’s May, and the spring sun is warm overhead.

“… got to stay strong, okay?” Louis hears the new guy say quietly. “We’ll find you somewhere to stay tonight, and then we’ll figure something else out.” The guy presses a few rolled-up bills into her hand, and she thanks him shakily.

“That’s good of you,” Louis says as the girl walks away, and the guy whirls around in surprise.

“Oh, well, thanks,” he says, shrugging. “We went to high school together, seemed wrong to pretend I didn’t recognize her.” He rakes a hand through his hair, sighing. “‘Course, all the money in the world can’t do what a couple of weeks off the street could. Especially since bazooka is so easy to get you can order it at the deli counter like it’s a fuckin’ ham.”

He kicks at the wall next to him, the brick scuffing the faded white of his Nikes. Louis just watches, letting him let loose some of the anger roiling off of him in waves. He sighs, ruffles his hair again, and looks up at Louis through his eyelashes.

“Sorry about that, man,” he says wearily. “I just get so tired of it, seeing people I know ruined over and over by the same old things.” He exhales, shakes out his shoulders like trying to rid himself of the thought, and sticks out his hand for Louis. “I’m Liam Payne.”

There’s no one else on this quiet side street, so Louis doesn’t even hesitate; he lets his glamours drop, his sigils burning bright and his wings snapping open, smiles, and says, “I know.”

He hears Lottie’s voice in the back of his head, _always with the dramatics,_ but he doesn’t even care; this part is half the fun of living on earth instead of Above.

Still, the dramatics mean it takes a while to talk Liam down after he immediately shouts and scrambles backwards, cowering away from Louis and mangling the Ave Maria in his panic. But Louis pulls his glamours back on and tells Liam, soothingly as he can be, that he’s a friend, and that he was sent to help transition Liam into his new job, and soon enough Liam stops shaking.

“And what’s that?” Liam asks warily, elbows propped up on his knees. His Mets jacket — probably a good twenty years old if the fading in the collar is anything to go by, and too big in the shoulders so there’s no way it’s not his dad’s — is askew, his light-wash jeans smudged with dirt from where he tripped and fell. “What’s my new job?”

“You died sacrificing yourself for someone else,” Louis says gently. “That means, if you want to, of course, you would become a guardian angel.”

“Jesus Christ,” Liam whispers, wide-eyed, then his cheeks flare red. “Oh, shit, sorry! That’s, like, blaspheme, isn’t it? I didn’t mean to, I still want to be an angel.”

Louis chuckles, helping Liam to his feet. “C’mon, let’s take a walk.”

Roosevelt Avenue bustles, the midday traffic loud and constant, but Liam doesn’t seem to notice. His brows are furrowed in thought, and he easily sidesteps a man stepping out of a cafe as though this is a usual routine for him. Louis lets him take his time — angels are a difficult enough concept for people to wrap their heads around, and most of them aren’t being offered the chance to _be_ one — and takes in the sights. Police sirens ring in the distance, and if Louis strains he can hear the pounding feet of the would-be burglar against the pavement, his terrified breaths. There’s a crowded diner up ahead, high schoolers laughing and chatting as their feet dangle over the edge of a brick wall, cigarette smoke wafting overhead.  

“So I died,” Liam says, apropos of nothing and after a long few minutes of silence. Louis snorts, but then schools it away.

“Yeah,” he answers. “If you need a moment, we can go somewhere private.”

“I… I think I already knew,” Liam says slowly. “Or at least, I knew something was different. I saw one of my friends on the street yesterday and I knew, somehow, he wasn’t supposed to see me, so I hid.”

“Guardians usually don’t go back to see their families or loved ones after,” Louis agrees. “Causes a lot of problems, I’m sure you understand.”

“Yeah,” Liam says, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Do you remember what happened?” Louis asks. “You may not for a while, that’s normal. It’ll come back to you.”

“No, I- I think I remember,” Liam murmurs. “I was… I was heading to my ma’s. Family dinner night, you know, and since I got laid off from the station-“

“Station?” Louis interrupts.

“Fire station,” Liam grins proudly, then it falls. “FDNY Ladder 154. Was there for a couple years, then the budget cuts hit and a bunch of us were let go.”

“A firefighter, eh?” Louis says, giving Liam a once-over. It does make sense; Liam seems like the type who would’ve been a cowboy if born a century earlier, and since he missed out on that opportunity he chose a contemporary equivalent instead. “Yeah, I can see it.”

Liam’s shoulders lift, just for a moment. “Yeah?” he smiles. “I spent my whole life going back and forth between cop and firefighter, but I was never much good with a gun.”

Louis smiles, nudging at Liam with his elbow, and expects him to continue. He doesn’t, though, his brows furrowed again as he stares down at his shoes.

Then he says, “It wasn’t easy, growing up here. Everyone’s broke, and not just broke for a while where they can pick up some extra shifts to cover the bills, I mean constantly broke. Everyone’s broke, and everything’s broken, and then we’ve got fuckin’- I don’t know. Drugs everywhere, violence everywhere. Crack’s cheaper than food, didja know?” He laughs, and it’s a terribly sad sound. “I wasn’t joking earlier. Go to any deli, any convenience store, get half a gram of bazooka for twenty bucks.”

“That’s tough to watch,” Louis says carefully.

“It was, yeah,” Liam agrees. His shoulders are hunched in, defensive and hurt. “S’why I said cop or firefighter, early as I could I was looking into how I could help people. Wanted to be Superman, be fuckin’ _Batman_ , wanted to save the world. There’s so much fuckin’ _bad_ out there, and so many people don’t do anything about it, and I didn’t want to be like that. And I got a job, and did good work, _real work,_ saving people’s _lives_ for two years.” A deep breath in. “Then I was cut. Had nothing to do, nowhere to go. High school diploma only gets you so far.”

Louis makes a soft noise, encouraging Liam to go on; the intricacies of human life don’t always make sense to him, but he thinks he gets where this is going. It’ll be good for Liam to get it off his chest, and that’s what Louis is here for — full time angel, part time therapist.

“I felt… useless,” Liam admits quietly. “Helpless. Picked up a few hours at Murray’s garage on 35th, but they didn’t need me there and I didn’t help much. I was struggling, I won’t lie.”

“What happened?” Louis presses.

“I smelled smoke,” Liam says, eyes distant. “Walking to my parents’ house after working at the garage, I smelled smoke. Saw a house all lit up from the inside, a few people outside. Trucks were on the way, but it was going to be too late, and I heard the lady yelling about her daughter trapped inside her room. So I busted down the front door.”

Louis can almost see it, Liam walking along just like he is now, dejected and tired, collar flipped up against the wind. He probably heard the screaming, even if he’s blocked it out; people are always screaming. And then he shouldered through the front door, thundered up the narrow stairs. Maybe the door was stuck, maybe something fell and blocked the way; Liam probably blistered his hands getting the door open, but it worked, and suddenly the little girl was there in front of him, crying and terrified.

“I picked her up,” Liam says, like he’s following the scene in Louis’ mind, “tried to go down the stairs, but a beam had broken through the wall and was blocking the way. Her room was on the third story, so if we’d tried to use the window she’d have gotten hurt.” His shoulders straighten once more, his eyes hard but in a way that changes his face into something reassuring, determined. “There was only one thing left to do.”

He ran. Louis could hear it in his voice, could see it clear as day. Liam was faced with a problem, and the solution was to use his body to protect the little girl; it was the only choice left, so that’s what he did.

“I realized about halfway down the stairs that I couldn’t feel my legs,” Liam says distantly, as though this didn't happen to him, like he's repeating a sad story he heard on the evening news: _coming up at 5 o’clock, hear the tragic story of one man’s sacrifice to save a total stranger._ “I don't remember how I got over the beam, but I think I hurtled it. Maybe. All I know is that I ended up on my knees at the bottom of the stairs, and I couldn't get up. I told the little girl to go, that's all I remember.” He rakes his hands through his hair. “I hope she's okay.”

And that's why Louis is here; Liam lost his life, the most important part of being a human, literally the _basis_ of his mortal experience… and he was worried about someone else.

“She's fine,” Louis promised, because he's been doing this job a long time, and he knows what questions good people like Liam will ask. He did his homework first. “Would you like to see her?”

Liam perks up. “Can we?”

Louis takes his hand and blinks; they swirl instantly across the borough to a house belonging to the little girl’s aunt. Her family is crowded into the little two-bedroom place until insurance money comes in to repair the house after the fire. Louis and Liam land on the roof of the house next door.

“Whoa, head rush,” Liam says, wobbling for a moment. Louis grabs his jacket to keep him from tumbling off the house — not that it would damage him permanently, but it's the principle of the thing — and Liam straightens up, brushing off his jeans. “Oh,” he says quietly. “Is that her?”

“Her name is Ruthie,” Louis tells him.

“Ruthie,” Liam repeats, sinking slowly to his knees. His eyes never leave the little girl, who's on her belly on the floor of a little bedroom, coloring expansively on a piece of paper. “That's my sister’s name.”

Louis hums. They watch little Ruthie for a moment, her ankles crossed in the air behind her. After a few minutes, she stands and bounds to the wall opposite the window. She pins her latest drawing up next to-

“That's my picture,” Liam says slowly. “The one I took when I started at the station.”

Louis squints, and he can see it too; Liam's right, that's him, bright-eyed and excited, fresh-faced eighteen with a buzz cut and full cheeks. When Louis’ glance flickers to the drawing Ruthie just hung up, his grin widens. “I think that's you, too,” he says, pointing to the stick figure with a mohawkish-mop on his head, and a wide black crayon smile.

“How'd she-”

“You're her hero,” Louis says easily. “People hang up pictures of their heroes on their walls.”

Liam is quiet for a moment, then he says, slightly awestruck, “ _I'm Batman.”_

Louis chuckles, and, for the first time, Liam laughs too. It's a nice sound, and Louis hopes it happens more often.

“Shit,” Liam laughs, shaking his head. He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and smacks one out, then fishes for a lighter. Louis rolls his eyes and snaps his fingers, a flame springing up between his pointer and his thumb, catching the end of the cigarette and lighting it. “Do I get cool magic powers now too?” he asks, grinning as he exhales a stream of smoke.

Louis laughs and throws his arm over Liam’s shoulders. “Stick with me, Payno, and I'll show you every cool trick in the book.”

 

* * *

 

_Jackson Heights, Queens, New York | 1981_

It takes a good month of training — and by training, Louis means him and Liam sitting in various places around New York, drinking coffee and eating anything that catches their fancy — before Liam runs out of questions.

From the angelic hierarchy —

( _“Wait. So you’re my superior, but I don’t report to you?”_

_“You report to a guy who reports to a guy who reports to me.”_

_“And what happens if I skip all that and jump straight to you?”_

_“That’s… an excellent question, Payno.”)_

to a quick rundown of the last million years of human history —

_(“Yes, Liam, dinosaurs were very real.”_

_“And they weren’t-“_

_“No, they weren’t dragons.”)_

Louis is pretty sure he talks more in that first month with Liam than he did in the entire millennia previous. Liam is insatiably curious, his big Bambi eyes so wide when Louis starts telling him about something new that he reminds Louis of Harry, back in the beginning, and he’s pretty sure they’re going to get along great.

And, because Louis is a self-aware individual who knows he can’t go a few hours without talking about Harry, he knows Liam’s dying to meet him, too. They’ve gone over the concept of demons — “Some of them are the stuff of nightmares, Payno, I won’t lie to you. But a lot of them aren’t, and some of them aren’t even that bad, and there are a couple that are even quite good.” — but he knows Liam hasn’t connected that to Harry, not yet. And since Harry spends the days Louis is working with Liam out seeing the sights of New York City, they haven’t exactly crossed paths.

Still, Louis is excited. Most of the guardians he trains get their requisite knowledge and go on their way, stationed somewhere remote. But Louis likes Liam, and his name has the type of pull that means he can get Liam a position in London, and maybe- maybe he could bring him to family dinner, or something. Maybe there could be a new face amongst the old friends, for the first time in a long, long time.

Louis planned to ease Liam into it: _alright, Payno, remember how I said some demons aren’t bad? Well, some of them might look like hellfire temptation but they smell like hemlock and smile like nectar, and temptation’s not all that bad anyway, by the way meet my eternal boyfriend, Harry_.

He doesn’t get that chance.

Louis and Harry’s apartment door bursts open with a loud _crack_ of doorknob against plaster, bits of the wall falling into a little dusty clump. Louis turns in surprise and sees Harry, struggling with-

“Is that a priest?” Louis asks interestedly. He hears Liam curse and jump to his feet, but he doesn’t pay him any mind.

There’s a thick, golden substance coating Harry’s shoulders and head, as though someone dumped a bucket of honey over him. He’s also not wearing his glamours, his grey skin partially hidden by the substance, but his eyes are clear black when they catch the light from the flickering Mets game on TV.

 _Oh,_ it’s holy oil all over him. Ironically not as effective on demons as it is on angels, not like holy water or consecrated wood, which means-

“Ah, you thought you’d bag yourself an angel,” Louis says to the priest, who has sweat pouring down his temples, his clerical collar soaked through. That Harry’s still letting him struggle must mean that he wants to knock him out, not kill him, but he’s putting up a hell of a fight anyway. Louis’ shoulders shake a little with laughter, his eyes catching Harry’s, who looks like he’s on the verge of grinning too. “Can't've been for anything good, eh? And it must’ve been a shock when you got him instead.”

Harry finally catches the priest in an unfortunate maneuver, spinning him around and knocking his head solidly against the wall, so that he drops like a stone, immediately unconscious.

“Well,” Harry says, dusting off his hands. “Not the way I’d planned to spend my Wednesday.”

He’s turning towards the bedroom — probably to take a bath, holy oil is a _bitch_ to get off — when something goes flying past Louis’ face and embeds itself into Harry’s arm. Harry frowns, and pulls it out; it’s Liam’s sword (or, well, his dagger. He’s only been an angel a few weeks, hasn't been around long enough for it to be a sword yet), dripping Harry’s black blood onto the ground. Louis turns, shocked, to see Liam has backed himself into the corner of the room, eyes flickering from Harry to the priest still slumped unconsciously in the doorway.

“S’not very nice,” Harry says, tossing the blade aside.

“Get out of here, _demon!”_ Liam shouts. “Louis, run!”

Ah, right. Louis can see what went wrong here. He turns to Liam with a sheepish expression.

“Uh. Harry, meet Liam. Liam,” he says, smiling ruefully, “this is Harry.”

Harry smiles like the devil (he can’t help it, the holy oil is keeping him from changing back to his non-demonic face) and Louis groans, dropping his face into his hands.

 

* * *

 

_London, England | March 2016_

Mid-way through March, Liam shows up at Harry and Louis’ flat two hours before family dinner was supposed to start, looking simultaneously shaky and murderous.

“Someone tried to pin a kidnapping on me?” he asks wildly, appearing with a concussive blast of air in the middle of their living room. Harry and Louis, who had been sleepily tangled on their sofa, sit up slowly.

“Who told you?” Louis asks.

Liam laughs; the sound is harsh like sandpaper. “Does that matter? You knew, and you didn't tell me.”

“You're right, I didn't,” Louis says, feeling his spine slowly straighten until he's square-shouldered, looking his actual age and rank. He's Liam’s superior — sometimes Liam forgets, hell, sometimes _Louis_ forgets, but that doesn't make it any less true. “One of Nick’s girls, Pixie, was taken and left for dead a few weeks ago. Whoever it was took her memory of the night, and planted what we think was a false memory of someone who looks like you.”

Liam's trying to keep up the anger, but it's no use; the confusion visibly swamps over him. “Why? Why not tell me?”

“We don't know,” Louis says honestly to answer the first. He doesn't bother answering the second, and Liam knows exactly why that is: he'd believed an unsubstantiated rumor about Harry, someone he's known for thirty years, because he didn't think enough of Harry to try and search for an alternate answer. If he'd known he himself had been the subject of similar rumors, he'd have looked for a culprit and, finding none, might have attacked Harry across the dinner table.

“You had no right to keep that from me,” Liam says, but it's a weak argument.

“I made a judgment call,” Louis says. “You're biased and upset, you wouldn't have handled it well. Clearly,” he adds in an undertone, though he gestures outright at Liam’s shaky hands. “Who told you?” he asks again.

“No one,” Liam says begrudgingly. “Two people were whispering about it when I went Upstairs to turn in some paperwork.”

Louis meets Harry's eyes and they share a significant look; rumors are one thing, and Heaven and Hell and Earth in-between are full to the brim with them. But lingering rumors? Dark gossip, crimes against others and whispered secrets filled with actual fear? That's not normal.

“Something's wrong, Liam,” Louis says frankly. “I don't know what, and I definitely don't know why, but things are happening and someone is orchestrating that. If we're going to get in front of it, we have to work _together,”_ he says, dipping his head to meet Liam’s glare, which had been directed at the floor. “In-fighting hurts us, not the people responsible.”

Liam glares at the floor for a little longer then, almost imperceptibly, nods. He leaves again without a goodbye.

Dinner is stilted later that night, strained and a little quiet, but when Liam gets ready to leave he claps Harry on the shoulder.

It's not much, and there's still something ominous swirling around them, like something hidden in a whirl of fog, looming and threatening.

It’s not much. But it's something.

 

* * *

 

_Lefkada, Greece | 1963_

Sometimes, Harry misses Greece.

They joke about how they've adopted England as their actual homes, that Louis drinks enough Yorkshire tea and Harry apologizes-without-apologizing enough that they're proper Englishman now. They’ve had a flat in London since the aftermath of the Great Fire, when rebuilding was quick and places to live were cheap, and London grew up around them so much that they felt like the first tree in the forest, roots overlapping theirs so they can’t easily break away and leave. It's not out of the ordinary — immortals tend to find niches and get comfortable, to let the regional dialect slide into their words, to start thinking of a place as _home_ instead of owned territory or a tactical position.

But sometimes, just sometimes, Harry misses Greece.

They don't usually go back to Elis — it's been monumentalized and cordoned off in places now, a way for contemporaries to study what was. Zeus’ temple fell ages back, and Hera’s is little more than rubble. Olympia stands silent and the gods themselves, like Niall's family, have pulled away from the world, frightened by humans and what they've become. They've let their kingdoms crumble out of self-preservation.

(The bench where Harry and Louis used to sit inside the sanctuary is still standing, miraculously. Harry thinks it's a metaphor about the two of them and the strength of their relationship. Louis thinks he stress-sweated so much holy grace over that bench when Harry smiled at him or laughed at his jokes two thousand years ago that it's practically an angel-sanctified shrine. Not even an earthquake could topple it now.)

When Harry misses Greece they drop everything and go; if Louis is offered a job, he turns it down, they let Niall know they won’t make it to family dinner, Harry packs a bag they don’t really need and they go the way any human would go. Plane, train, bus. Bikes or cars or ferries. Sometimes they walk, walk until their knees ache and their ankles crack. Anything to make Harry feel a little more human, like his heart still beats red instead of black and that he can go home if he needs to, even if his mother’s house fell to age and nature a long time ago.

This time they’re in Lefkada, a quiet city on a quiet island, blue waters and warm sand and something in the air that makes Harry’s shoulders visibly loosen.

“Beach?” Louis asks, opening a sun-faded map they bought last time they were in Greece, showing all the roads and bridges that’ve been added since the Golden Age when last Harry was actually familiar with the area.  

“Hmm, no,” Harry says. “I want to go up.” He’s switched back to Greek, usually does when he’s home, the heavy syllables deeper now than they were when he lived here.

“Up,” Louis repeats, then he and Harry spin slowly on the spot, looking for ideas. Louis points at the edge of a rocky outcropping high on a cliff overhead, just barely visible through a dense thicket of trees. “That’s up.”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, smiling. “That’s up.”

So they trek on, up a worn mountain path between trees and over hills, until the ground rises vertically in front of them and they have to climb. Eventually, they pull themselves over the edge of a plateau, a jutting section of rock angled out over the cove below. It's like standing over a painting, the wide sea stretching around them and dyeing the world turquoise, a row of bright-colored shops and candy-striped umbrellas along the beachfront.

Harry’s feet take him to the edge of the cliff and he stands there, hands at his side and hair flowing in the wind — like the carved mermaid at the front of a ship, if mermaids wore yellow swim trunks and Hawaiian patterned shirts. Louis wants to laugh, but he knows Harry’s looking out over cool seawater towards home, his first home, orientating himself to it like a compass finding North. They're too close to Elis for Harry to pretend he doesn't feel it.

He misses his mother; Louis can feel it like a bruise radiating out from Harry’s body. He misses Anne, and he misses Gemma, and he misses the goldsmith and the fruit merchant and the little boys who wanted to play gladiator and the soldiers who looked the other way when he and Louis caused trouble. Life was harder then, and it was never going to be easy, but it was simpler, too, in ways Louis could have never expected. Immortality brings about its own slew of issues, and Harry’s turn was fraught with all sorts of complications they never had to deal with when Harry was human.

For long minutes they stand there, the crash of waves against stone far below echoing like an aching, methodical heartbeat. The world seems old and weary around them, and for the first time in a long while Louis feels small, feels young.

Then Harry takes a seat, and the spell is broken. He pats the space next to him and Louis takes it gratefully, swinging their legs over the edge of the cliff.

Something tickles at the edges of Louis’ awareness. It’s not a threat, he can feel that, but it’s still disconcerting. Almost like being watched, like he could turn and see eyes peeking out from behind the trees at their backs. He can reach out his consciousness and feel that there’s nothing there, Harry’s soul the only living thing for a mile around them, but his skin still prickles with it.

But then Harry asks, “Ham or turkey?” and pulls a couple of sandwiches out of his bag, and Louis forgets about the weird feeling on the back of his neck. They snack on grapes and crackers and talk about what there is to see here, the sights Harry might have seen if he really had gone off to be a sailor before Louis walked into his life. Most everything here is too new — relatively, of course, because hardly anyone else besides a two-thousand-year-old demon and his immortal boyfriend would call a castle built in the thirteenth century _new_ — to be from Harry’s time, but there are a couple of spots that Homer mentioned that Harry wants to see, and they both could feel the remains of old Ithaca under their feet in the older parts of town.

“And there’s a rumor,” Harry says, then wrinkles his nose, “well, not so much a rumor anymore, but a legend. About this island.”

“Yeah?” Louis asks, nudging at Harry’s side. “Anything fun?”

“Depends on what you characterize as fun,” Harry says dryly. Then he clears his throat, rubs at his bottom lip with his thumb. “My- my mum told me once that this is where Achilles is buried.”

“Oh,” Louis says as it clicks into place. “Is that who’s here?”

“What?” Harry asks in bewilderment, but Louis turns and looks over his shoulder. Achilles won’t be seen unless he wants to be seen — spirits are funny that way — but Louis knows if he’d actually wanted to hide then Louis would have never found him in the first place. A cloud shifts overhead, throwing a ray of sunlight cutting through the trees, and he sees-

“Was he blonde?”

 _“What?”_ Harry chokes out a half-laugh, spinning to peer off into the trees as well. [Achilles](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.l6py1ufw5ul9) — that’s who that is, Louis can tell now — is little more than a wisp of the scent of figs and a head of wild curls, but there’s a spark of mischievousness rolling off of him like an aura, nearly hiding-

“He’s not alone,” Louis says.

The spirit behind Achilles is softer, somehow, as though the edges aren’t as firm. Darker, too, like hollyoak or merlot, dark-red and calm.

“Patroclus,” Harry breathes.

Patroclus is more careful than Achilles, and if he was a little more opaque Louis thinks he could just make out the edges of his fingers wrapped in the back of Achilles’ chiton, holding him back.

Somehow — call it instinct, call it a gut feeling — Louis knows why they’re here. They heard their names; their interest has been piqued. “Tell the story,” he says to Harry. “Achilles and Patroclus. Tell their story.”

When Louis looks away from the diaphanous spirits, Harry’s eyes catch his for a long moment before he takes a deep breath and begins. Louis _feels_ more than sees Achilles take a seat just at the edge of the treeline, listening to the low murmur of Harry’s voice. He sounds like Anne, now, when he’s telling stories, not as embellishing and animated as he was during the summer they spent together in Elis but calm, measured, a slow roll of syllables.

Harry talks until he’s hoarse, weaving a world where jealous people went to war and good men died for it. He talks about a cocky boy on the cusp of adulthood, preening and glorious in his armor, and the dark-haired boy who trailed after him, his anchor in the storm. When he spins the story of stolen armor, and a warrior’s death, the playful mood Achilles’ spirit had been putting off changes into something dark and heavy, mournful and angry, but even that is outweighed by the rumble of low-grade pain rolling off of Patroclus behind him.

“I couldn’t do it,” Louis murmurs, sliding his fingers through Harry’s. “I can’t imagine losing you, and not being able to follow where you went.”

“I can’t imagine being stuck watching you be in pain, not able to do anything about it,” Harry says back.

If the hurt radiating out from the spirits tells them anything, it’s that Achilles and Patroclus agree wholeheartedly about just how impossible it is.

Louis and Harry sit in silence for a while and look out over humanity in the city down below, at the sunlight pushing its way into the clear blue water of the uncaring ocean. Louis thinks about pale, innocent skin under a pure white chiton, hemlock blossoms braided into a crown of curls. He thinks of the history Harry could have had, a life cut short at seventeen and that's the end of the book, written too soon. He thinks about actions and consequences, about immortal blood and insatiability.

A few hours pass, and eventually the spirits fade out and leave Harry and Louis to their solitude. Louis reassures Harry they’re not _gone_ gone, just back to the old bit of rubble he's pretty sure used to be a tomb halfway up the mountain, and they pack up and start the walk back to Lefkada city.

But Louis keeps his hand tucked in Harry’s the whole way down the mountain because right now it feels like it would be impossible to let go, and when the wind sweeps through the trees he smells figs and merlot, and the edge of something that feels mischievous.

 

* * *

 

_London, England | March 2016_

Amy and Eoghan aren’t at the next family dinner.

“They’re fine,” Niall reassures everyone, but he’s got a pinched look around his eyes that says he’s more worried than he’s letting on. In fact, it’s a bare bones crew tonight — Ed’s with his cellist, Jade and Jesy haven’t been in a few weeks, Lottie and Fizzy and the twins are busy (and keeping out of trouble, Louis made them promise).

“They’re safe, right?” Harry asks, concern making a divot between his brows.

“They’re fine,” Niall repeats. “Now come on, I didn’t cook all this food for nothing. Dig in.”

It’s subdued and quiet as they start to eat, and the alcohol is kept packed away as though tonight isn’t a night for carefree enjoyment. They pass tidbits of news to each other and pretend it’s just gossip, but it’s not, and they all know it; another angel was kidnapped and released days later, unable to identify his attackers but swearing up and down he saw black eyes when he woke up. A demon was found tied to a chair in a basement in Russia, half-mad from an exorcism gone wrong.

“Something’s wrong,” Louis says when he can’t hold it in any longer. Around the table, heads nod in agreement. This isn't how things are supposed to be; they're supposed to be at peace. Even when the humans are at war, things are never this tense. 

“But what?” Steve asks, and no one has an answer for him.

 

* * *

 

_Leeds, England | 1858_

Harry adjusts his cravat and grins at Louis across the carriage, his smile bright and excited. There’s a frisson of energy in the air, the kind brought about by grand balls and ornate ceremonies, white gloves and silk dresses. The streets are loud, commonfolk watching as lords and ladies make their way into the brand new Leeds Town Hall.

Louis grins back, then schools his face into the impassive, only-slightly-impressed lip curl that he perfected on the drive down from London. Harry coughs a laugh and does the same, tucking his top hat under his arm and nudging Louis out of the carriage with his cane.

The city bustles, magnetic delight overpowering the soot and steam from the nearby chimneys. A footman bows and ushers Harry and Louis along into the line of well-adorned nobles streaming into the Hall, their tickets tucked firmly in Louis’ breast pocket. They’re showed to their seats and Harry twists like a child, staring in awe up at the bright blue ceiling, the massive golden organ at the front of the high-ceilinged room.

“You’d think you weren’t raised in Greece at the height of the Golden Age,” Louis chuckles under his breath, and Harry bounces in his seat a little. A lady watching them nearby hides her amused grin behind a program, but Louis puts a hand on Harry’s thigh just for a moment to calm him. “Settle, love. The people are going to think this is your first high class event.”

“But this _is_ my first- oh,” Harry laughs. He slides back in his seat and crosses his legs, a jittery ankle resting on his knee.

Whispers sweep through like wildfire a few moments later, the steady march of the Queen’s guard making their presence known.

“The _Queen_ is here?” Harry whispers giddily, bouncing back up in his seat again.

“I told you she would be,” Louis says, shoving his own program of events at Harry, pointing out the knighting and the ceremonial salute and the ceremonial flag-raising and a whole lot of other nonsense. “Look, we have to sit through all this pomp before the music starts.”

“Well, it is our first [music festival](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.if7dxttf4de),” Harry says. “We have to earn it.”

“Not bloody likely,” Louis snorts, but it’s an empty threat, and Harry chuckles because he knows it. He wouldn’t miss the chance to see the first ever Leeds Music Festival with Harry perched at his side for anything, pomp and ceremonial nonsense notwithstanding.

The sunlight streams in through the wide Hall windows, and Louis is hair-raisingly aware of the strict society rules that say he can’t take Harry’s hand as the Chorus starts to sing, but he’s so overwhelmed by the look of joy on Harry’s face that he slides his pinky along the outer seam of Harry’s trousers, and Harry hooks their ankles together under their seats.

 

* * *

   

_London, England | April 2016_

The moment Louis gets the text, he and Harry exchange a look and sprint to their bedroom, scrambling for shoes and jackets.

 **_Zaynner:_ ** _bro. get here._

Zayn’s flat is a tiny thing jam-packed with books and half-painted canvases and designer clothing strewn about on every available surface, amongst scattered piles of herbs and oils and mysterious magical powders. He spends so much time bouncing between Niall’s place and Harry and Louis’ that the flat is more a storage space than anything else, but he’s had the lease for ages — quite literally; the landlord thinks Zayn is the third in a line of Zayn Maliks to rent the place from him and that it’s just been passed from father to son for generations — and there _are_ very good reasons he keeps the place, even if it costs him a small fortune in rent every month.

“It’s open!” Zayn calls when Harry knocks on his door, and when they push their way inside Louis isn’t surprised to see the cluttered living room deserted, but the door to Zayn’s repurposed second room slightly ajar. He and Harry exchange a look and cross quietly to where candlelight is flickering inside what originally was a second bedroom, but now is used for something very different.

Louis takes a breath before he crosses the threshold, the wave of warding spells and protective enchantments so strong that they make his chest constrict as he passes through, but they’re all a necessary evil: of the entire immortal family Louis has built and pulled around himself, Zayn has always been the most vulnerable, and so the others have spent years layering their protections over him. _This_ room in particular has extreme defenses since it’s where Zayn is at his most vulnerable, and Niall jokes that London will fall someday and this room will still be standing, with Zayn trapped happily inside still prophesizing and crystal-ball-gazing to his heart’s content.

Niall and Liam are the only two others here, and Louis immediately feels his shoulders go stiff; that Zayn called only the five of them here can only mean something foreboding.

“Haz, Lou, c’mere,” Zayn says, beckoning them further into the room. “And shut the door.”

With the door closed the room almost hums with energy, symbols and words painted on the wall glowing with power. The focus of the room, though, is the giant to-scale rendering of the sun, moon, and planets carved into the floor, with Earth as the center point where Zayn sits, cross-legged, surrounded by a ring of candles.

And this is why he refuses to give up this flat: the commute might be a bitch, and the rent is horrifyingly high, but there’s not a place in London, hell, in all of _England_ , with a more powerful Seeing setup.

“What’s up?” Louis asks, taking a seat outside the ring of candles. Niall’s sprawled out over the carved sun at the eastern edge of the room, his finger tracing the grooves in the wood, and Liam’s got his back to the wall, feet outstretched in front of him. Harry takes a seat as well: he sits directly on the carving of Uranus, then giggles to himself for a full minute until Louis says, “Just go on without him, he’ll catch up eventually.”

Zayn grins and shifts a little, like he’s getting comfortable. “Cool. Okay, so I was Seeing earlier, yeah? And I caught a glimpse of something that I think might be important, so I wanted to show you just in case we can use it.”

“How’re you gonna do that?” Niall asks, looking intrigued. Louis leans forward too, because in two hundred years he’s never known he could potentially see the things Zayn sees, even though Zayn swears up and down that most of it is mundane at best or nonsensical at worst.

“There’s enough power in here that I can project the vision outward, and you all are used to at least being communicated with telepathically, so it won’t short out your brains,” Zayn says, then adds, “I don’t think.”

“That’s reassuring,” Liam mumbles, but he scoots closer to the center as though he thinks that’ll help.

“It’ll be quick,” Zayn warns, “and I only want to try it once, in case anything could go wrong. But maybe between all of us, we can catch everything we need to see.” He draws a deep breath, something serious in his eyes. “I know we all already know this, but whatever is happening is big. And we need to stop it, using any means necessary.”

Louis looks up, meeting Zayn’s eyes first, then Niall’s and Harry’s and, lastly, Liam’s. This is why they’re here, just the five of them, no more and no less; their little found family is close-knit to the point of codependency, but the five in this room are the ones who prop it up. It’s their strength that has kept the family safe this long, because the immortal life is not one that’s guaranteed free from harm, and when it comes down to it they all know that they need each other.

So they all nod and shuffle to the edge of Zayn’s candle barrier, even Harry abandoning his spot on Uranus to complete a perfect square in each of the cardinal corners. Zayn rolls his shoulders and lays his palms down on the floor in front of him, his eyes falling shut as his shoulders droop, the tension bleeding out of him, then-

A rush of color sweeps across Louis’ vision, a blur of motion like he’s watching a film from far too close to the screen. Pixelated and hazy, and Louis’ head immediately aches with the pressure of too much information at once.

And the the sound pours in, the ticking of a grandfather clock like the tolling of a bell right next to his ears, a small flame in a grate like a roaring bonfire, muffled sounds, _vocal_ sounds, like words yelled through cloth. Like-

The scene coalesces in front of his eyes like an antenna being maneuvered into the exact position for a perfect signal, static clearing away to a complete picture.

It's not sharp, though, some elements of the room blurred out like the edges of a fisheye lens, recognizable and incomprehensible at the same time. He can halfway make out someone tied to a chair, but he couldn't tell you who it was if his life depended on it. There's a feeling in his gut, though, that it's someone he knows. Someone familiar, and sometime in the future they're going to be tied to a chair and gagged as they scream.

But Louis can't focus on that, he can't, because that's not what this vision is telling him. No, this vision is meant to tell him something else, and he casts around for the details that aren't fuzzy and indistinct.

First is a woman’s voice, soft and lilting, almost teasing. He can't make out the words but he hears the tone, and it reminds him of every villain in every film who spins a sharp knife between their hands as they lay out the steps of their evil plot. Ridiculous posturing but a violent edge to the words, like the softness is just a disguise for the deadly steel underneath.  

The fire in the grate catches his eye next, and he lingers for a long moment trying to figure out what about the flames are making him hesitate. Something's off, but he can't put a finger on it because-

There’s a book, a book positioned on a stand nearby, and there’s a sickly sort of aura coming off of it. It feels like death, like ash and blackened, dead tree stumps after a forest fire. Louis can’t move closer, he wishes he could, but he _can’t_ , and-

He gasps as the vision flickers away like a veil being removed, Zayn’s flat coming back into focus once more. The four outside the Seeing circle are no longer neatly positioned at the four cardinal directions but splayed around the room, as though a massive wind came through and swept them all off their feet. Liam is crumpled against the furthest wall, and Niall is hunched in on himself not far from him. Harry’s on his back, lying on the carving of Pluto at the western edge of the room, chest rising and falling rapidly, arms and legs akimbo.

Louis doesn’t know where he is in relation to his starting place, because all he can see is the shifting muscles in Zayn’s back, the veins in his arms standing in relief from the rest of his skin, his fingers white with pressure against the floor as though he’s trying to burrow his way through the wood. Something's wrong. 

“Zayn,” Louis croaks. Liam makes a pained noise but rolls over to investigate, and Harry stops shaking long enough to sit up.

“Zayn,” Niall echoes, voice weak. Zayn is still hunched over, the candles in the circle around him crackling wildly.

Louis smacks his palm against the floor in frustration, in fear, and there’s a dent under his hand. “ _Zayn!_ ”

The candles all extinguish themselves with a _whoosh_ , and the hold of the spell is broken; Zayn scrambles away from the Seeing circle, backing away from the carefully drawn spell lines and archaic symbols. His chest is heaving, sweat pouring off of him.

“So,” he says, still panting. “What do you think?”

For a moment, the other four are stunned, and then Niall chokes out a soft, surprised laugh. “I think I’m never doing that again,” he says, and Louis chuckles in agreement.

“Is it like that for you _all the time_?” Harry asks.

“No, it was definitely pushing it out to you lot that made it so strong. Normally it’s- no, it’s not like that.”

“I mean with the,” Harry waves his hand vaguely but expansively in front of his face. “The colors and sounds.”

“Oh, yeah, that. That’s normal,” Zayn grins tiredly. “Like an acid trip on speed.”

“We’ll take your word for it,” Louis says. “So about that vision.”

“Right,” Zayn says, cracking his neck and then leaning forward, his elbows resting on his crossed knees. “I’m used to seeing the visions and I’m decent at reading them, but I want to know if you caught anything I didn’t.”

“There was the book,” Liam says immediately. “The one on the stand.”

“Right,” Niall says. “That seemed the most important part.”

“Anyone catch a title, or get close enough to read anything?” Zayn pushes.

Everyone shakes their heads, but Louis offers, “It felt wrong.”

“It did,” Liam pipes in immediately. “It felt like people do when they’re sick.”

“It was familiar, though. Wrong in a familiar way,” Louis murmurs. His mind has seen too many centuries to easily grasp at a barely-identified memory, but he knows he’s felt this before.

“Do we know who was being…” Liam trails off.

Zayn makes a sympathetic face. “No. If the person’s features are obscured, it means I’m not meant to interfere. We’ll be able to handle it when it happens, but we can’t stop it from happening or warning whoever it was.”

For a few minutes they continue throwing out random details they can half-recall, about the person who was talking, about the book on the stand, about the little cluttered space the tableau had taken place in. Liam starts hypothesizing about the full moon outside the window that he _swore_ he saw, and that maybe it had to do with werewolves, and then he and Niall start arguing about werewolves and their aversion to magic or lack thereof and Louis’ head is starting to pound again, but then the room falls silent when Harry says, “The fire.”

“What about it?” Zayn asks.

“It was-“ Harry stops, frowning down at the floor. “It was blue.”

“No it wasn’t,” Niall says, still snappish from his argument with Liam.

Harry looks up, his expression serious. “It was blue.”

And Louis remembers pausing for a moment in the vision, staring at the fire because something was off.

“He’s right,” Louis says on an exhale, “he’s right, it was blue.”

Not entirely blue, but the part of the flames closest to the bottom, the hottest part, was stretched up much further than it usually reached. If he hadn’t been looking for anything out of the ordinary, he would’ve missed it, because it wasn’t like the flames were bright aquamarine or-

Louis gasps, looking up and meeting Harry’s eyes, and he knows Harry’s remembering the same thing he did.

“Blue fire,” he says.

“The book, the mysterious book,” Harry says.

“ _What?_ ” Niall asks.

“The book, the fire, we’ve seen it before,” Louis explains, the memory finally slamming into him. Harry in a summoning circle, Louis with a headache, a jar of blue flames and some snotty teenagers playing Hermione. “The day we were both summoned by those kids, we saw it.”

“Summoned by kids? What? When was this?” Liam demands.

Harry runs his hand through his hair, rings catching in the tangles. “I dunno, Liam, it wasn’t a big deal. Some kids got a hold of a spellbook and summoned me and then Louis to this basement.”

Liam’s eyes are wide. “ _Kids_ did that? That’s- that’s ridiculously powerful stuff.”

“It was a mistranslated spell!” Louis insists. “The Latin was terrible, there was even a mistake in the phrase on the front of the book.”

“What was the book?” Niall asks.

“ _Carminibus Cinis_ ,” Louis tells him.

“Ash incantations,” Zayn murmurs with a frown. “And the subtitle?”

“ _Igni natura vincantur integra_ ,” Harry says, and Louis can remember the way his nose wrinkled when he read it, like hearing an old familiar song’s lyrics sung wrong.

“Through fire, nature is… conquered?” Liam translates slowly.

“The original is ‘through fire, nature is reborn,’” Louis says. “It’s an old saying, really old. Like, inscribed on the Cross during crucifixion old.”

“Jesus,” Niall breathes.

Louis feels an inappropriate laugh bubble up. “Yeah, that guy.”

“There was a rune, too,” Louis remembers, suddenly struck. He pushes up his shirtsleeve, showing the others. The rune the teenagers (or someone) carved into his inner elbow is just a scar, now, the skin paler and tougher. Harry rolls his sleeve as well to show his, the flame surrounding the cupped hand.

Liam asks, “Do you know what that is? What it means?”

“No,” Louis admits. “I think it’s specific to this cult, coven, whoever they are. I think it’s their mark.”

“Okay,” Zayn says, eyes flickering at unseen points as he tries to piece together what they know and what they don’t. “So we’ve got a group of teenagers who somehow managed to wrangle enough power to summon not only Harry, but Louis, using a spellbook called _Carminibus Cinis_ , possibly a blue flame, and a made up rune. And sometime in the future, someone else is going to use the same spellbook to capture someone else we know.”

Laid out like that, it almost seems simple.

“We need that book,” Liam says grimly.

But it’s never, ever that simple.

“I burned that book,” Louis swears.

And it’s almost like being back to square one.

 

* * *

 

_Leeds, England | 2011_

Harry and Louis go back to Leeds in 2011 on a whim, an open weekend and a basically unlimited amount of money and (semi-)youthful irresponsibility urging them on.

“I’ve heard it’s a little different than the last time we went,” Harry says, holding up two pairs of wellies and grinning maniacally. “And we have to _blend in,_ Louis.”

It’s very, very different.

It’s bright lights and pounding bass and a flask of Niall’s best liquor dropped into their cheap drinks. It’s body paint and pills on tongues and pressing up against Harry for hours and hours, music moving through them like a metronome, touching Harry in ways that would have gotten them hanged back at that first Leeds festival. It’s a dark, uncomfortable tent and a loud campground, it’s the smell of Harry mixed with smoke and dry ice and dewy grass. It’s yelling lyrics to the sky like prayers. It’s promising they’ll always have here, and now, and _this;_ that they’ll always have Leeds.

It’s one of the best weekends of Louis’ long, long life.

 

* * *

 

_Shahpur, Punjab, British Indian Empire (modern day Pakistan) | 1863_

After Elis, Harry and Louis set one ground rule, and one ground rule only: they'll never compete against each other for a target ever again.

In Elis it was fun, but only because it was just a month. Harry was giddy with joy over finding Louis again after years back on Earth with no sign of him, and Louis was beyond ecstatic after finding that Harry was _alive_ , and _well_ , and _whole_. It was fun playing undercover immortals for a little while, sneaking through the streets, bribing guards and showing a bit of fang (metaphorical, at that point) or conjuring a bit of fire to get humans to scramble. It didn't matter who won or who lost, because at the end of every day they collided back into each other like stars and black holes, inexorable and impossible.

But they couldn't do that forever. They're too competitive, and everything was still raw. _Good,_ absolutely. Very, very, _incredibly_ good. But raw, too. Painful. Fifty years doing time Below painful. Decades spent thinking the love of his life was _dead_ painful.

So they set a rule, and they promised each other that no matter the offerings, they won't accept jobs that mean they're actively working against each other.

The promise holds for a good millennium and a half.

And then there's Zayn.

“Hurry,” is the first thing Louis hears, stirring him from sleep. It’s a hot summer night, dry heat and drier wind pulling at him from the open window. Outside, things are as quiet as a never-sleeping province can be, muted under the wide night sky. Louis rolls onto his back, sheets sliding off his sleep-warm skin, and then he hears the voice again. “This way, [_mera_ _jaans_](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.1f3cxfix0j8b). Quiet now.”

Louis, drawn by the voice trying to be at once soothing and rushed, creeps to the window. Below, in the tight space between two buildings, a family is huddled in the shadows as the tallest — the father, Louis would guess — peeks out into the open street. The coast must be clear, because the father turns back to his family and whispers, gruffly, “We have to hurry.”

Another voice, and this one must be the mother. “Be careful, my loves. Don’t get separated.”

“Once we get to the edge of the city, we’ll change out of these,” the father says, plucking at what Louis has just realized is a shoddy version of stealthy attire, all black from head to toe on all six family members. Their faces are covered with scarves, any defining features hidden by mismatched blouses and wide-legged trousers. The smallest of the group, a daughter, Louis believes, is wrapped in what looks to be her father’s jacket, the sleeves rolled several times and still so long they cover her hands. “And we’ll find the carriage.”

“And then what?” a new voice hisses, coming from the second tallest. A son, his shoulders straight and firm. “We settle somewhere new, and then we’re chased out once more? I should-“

“ _[Mera chaand](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.bxi4vevb9by3)_ _,_ no,” the mother says, cutting him off. “We aren’t leaving you here.”

“But-“

_“No.”_

Louis doesn’t blame the boy for dropping his head in defeat, but his curiosity itches like mad. This family doesn’t dress like people used to stealth and secrecy, and they don’t act as though they are anything other than wildly terrified. If they’re criminals, they’re either new at the whole crime game, or they somehow know Louis is watching and are incredible actors.

Somehow, Louis doesn’t think that’s what it is. But before he can puzzle out anything else, he feels a dark, pulling presence at the end of the alleyway, creeping up on the unsuspecting family. Ominous, like a swirl of dark water.

Louis makes a split-second decision, then leaps from the window, landing on one knee and pushing himself to standing. The tiny daughter in the oversized jacket yelps, and the rest of the family aren’t much more composed — the father scrambles in front of the rest of them, but Louis doesn’t have time to reassure anyone that he’s not the threat. He pushes to his feet and his wings expand to the edges of the alleyway, star-feathers brushing dirty brick.

The creeping, dark presence stops just out of the range of the light spilling into the alley from the street. Then, Louis hears, “Louis? Is that you?”

Louis squints. “Nick?”

Nick slinks out of the shadows, the darkness pulled back in around him so it doesn’t permeate the air like a shroud. His brow is furrowed. “What are you doing here?” And then his expression clears. “Oh, you must have come with-“

Another presence appears suddenly at the mouth of the alleyway, trapping Louis and the family in the middle. It’s impossible to make out any features, the roiling darkness like fog spreading out from the figure, but Louis would know the feeling of that soul anywhere. “Harry?”

“Lou?” comes Harry’s voice, and then, like Nick, he pulls the dark-and-threatening aura back so that the light can filter back in, and he’s suddenly an unassuming broad-shouldered outline once more instead of a terrifying mass of sin and smoke. It’s a handy trick, blotting out the light and filling the air with a grim sort of hopelessness, and Louis has seen it in action before when Harry was practicing, but he’s never been on the receiving end of it.

He doesn’t like it.

“What the hell is this,” Louis says, anger pulling the end of the sentence down like a demand instead of a question. “What could these people have possibly done that would earn them all” — he waves vaguely, trying to capture the slinking down alleyways and black eyes and general fear pouring off these poor humans — _“this?”_

Neither Harry nor Nick answer, and his anger builds.

_“Well?”_

“It’s- Lou,” Harry says desperately, and the thing is, Louis knows why he can’t get the words out. It’s this _thing_ they don’t discuss, will never discuss, because nothing good could come of it but that doesn’t stop it from being the truth: Harry’s reason for existence is the exact opposite of Louis’, and that will never not be the case. Harry will never stop being sent to steal souls away from borderline good people. Louis will never stop trying to save those teetering close to Falling.

Harry is evil personified; Louis forgets sometimes. He forgets that love and happiness and kindness and wonder can come from a black soul, and none of that _good_ diminishes the blackness of it. He forgets that Harry looks into souls and sees desires he can fuel, fears he can twist.

He forgets, is all.

“It has to be done,” Nick says, because Harry and Louis have gone silent, staring at each other over the heads of the terrified family; Louis pleading for answers, Harry unable to give them. “The boy was practicing witchcraft.”

“I wasn’t!” says the son vehemently, but Louis holds up a hand.

“That’s it?” he asks skeptically. “There are a hundred thousand people practicing witchcraft at this exact moment around the world. Why this boy in particular?”

Nick shifts awkwardly, and Harry is still sending off waves of distress at being sort-of at odds with Louis, but he won’t answer either.

So Louis turns to the source. “What’s your name?” he asks the boy, shielded behind his parents as though they think they can keep Louis away from him.

The boy hesitates for a moment, then carefully removes his mother’s hand clutching at his shoulder before he steps away from his family, unwinding the scarf from his face. He’s young, younger than Louis even thought. Eighteen at the most, a dusting of stubble on his thin cheeks, wide brown eyes experience-hardened but still youthful. He’s beautiful; beautiful in a way that reminds Louis of firelight, sharp and burning.

“Zayn,” he says. “My name is Zayn.”

All it takes is a brush of Louis’ hand against Zayn’s in greeting, and it all becomes sharply, crystalline clear. “He’s not a witch,” Louis growls, whirling back around to glare at Nick. “What do you need a prophet for?”

“A prophet?” Zayn asks, voice carefully neutral.

“That’s none- you don’t-“ Nick stammers, then his face hardens again. “Lou, come on. This isn’t my decision, you know it isn’t.” And Louis does know, he’s aware that orders to capture innocent prophets can only come from the very bottom of Hell. Still, he doesn’t like it.

“No,” he says.

“No?” Nick asks, eyebrow raising.

“No, you can’t have him,” Louis says, then amends that when he sees a new idea break across Nick’s face, his eyes flickering to Zayn’s family instead. “Can’t have any of them.”

“Lou,” Harry says quietly.

“No,” Louis says, holding up his hand again. “Stay with Nick tonight, Harry. The family will be with me. We’ll meet up in the morning to discuss what happens next.”

For moment, the tension is thick; it could remain a stalemate, or it could turn violent; stranger things have happened. But the moment passes and Nick nods, waving Harry to his side. Harry stops next to Louis as he passes, his eyebrows tilted in worry.

“Lou,” he repeats, circling a careful hand around Louis’ wrist.

Louis doesn’t say anything, just pats Harry’s chest and rests his hand there for a moment, over his heartbeat. Harry lays his hand over Louis’, then backs away, towards Nick.

It’s not like in over a thousand years they’ve never spent a night apart, but Louis will never like sending Harry away. He keeps looking over his shoulder as he and Nick melt back into the shadows, as though he expects Louis to change his mind and call him back. Louis doesn’t even pretend that he’s not wishing he could do the same thing.

Still, this is important. He’ll make up the night apart to Harry tomorrow; right now, he’s got a prophet and his family to shelter. “Follow me,” he murmurs, and lays his hand on the door of the building he and Harry had been staying in. The lock clicks from the inside, and then Louis is ushering the obviously reluctant family out of the alleyway.

Zayn’s mother is the last to go inside and she pauses, eyes sharp on Louis. “Will we be safe here?”

No human is ever fully safe, and he almost tells her that. Humans are strange, unpredictable creatures and they could have heart attacks or trip and break their necks or sneeze the wrong way and fall out an open window, and Louis can't protect them from that.

But demons stalking them, chasing them through the night? Yeah, those he can handle.

He nods, and the way the lines around her eyes smooth out tells him that if he doesn't keep that nonverbal promise, he won't get off easy.

Harry and Louis’ belongings are scattered around the little flat, and before they got here the place had been abandoned for no real reason — though Harry swears up and down a military commander (not someone too high in the ranks, but high enough to not be sleeping among the grunts in the barracks) used to stay here, but got sent back to England — so there are still odds and ends lying around that they don't know what to do with. One of Zayn’s sisters picks up a decorative knife from its stand, examining the hilt. Another tilts her head as she looks at a piece of art on the wall, a bland landscape Louis assumes is supposed to be the English moors. Zayn’s father hovers anxiously by the window, as though expecting Harry and Nick to still be hanging around.

“They won't be back,” Louis promises, breaking the silence. All six people turn sharply towards him.

“You're sure?” says a voice he hasn’t heard yet, soft and low behind the veil of a scarf. Zayn's eldest sister, Louis thinks, the one hovering near her father.

“Very,” Louis nods. He doesn't offer evidence, but he knows the spread of his wings, the subtle glow of sigils on his arms, those do more for his credibility than any verbal assurances could. “There are blankets and pillows if you want to sleep. I'll keep watch, but they aren't coming back for you tonight.”  

It takes a while for Zayn’s family to settle, slowly pulling off the scarves and extra layers of clothing until they look somewhat back to normal. His sisters fall asleep in a protective clump of limbs and dark hair, with their mother curved around one side of them and their father around the other. There's a spot there in the very center that is vaguely Zayn-shaped, as though they’re used to curling around him to keep him safe, but Zayn isn't in it; while his family all dropped off, adrenaline crashes pulling them into unconsciousness, he slid away from them and joined Louis at the window instead. His firelight eyes are sharp on the alleyway below them, though that seems to be more second nature than active surveillance, like a learned habit he can’t let go of.

“You weren't surprised,” Louis says quietly a few minutes later. “When I called you a prophet, you weren't surprised.”

Zayn’s legs are pulled up toward his chest, his forearms resting on his knees. _Young,_ Louis keeps thinking. _He's so young_. “I wasn't,” he agrees.

Louis doesn’t want to prod, but Zayn’s eyes are clear of sleep and the tension running in his veins is enough to keep him moving for a few days straight, so they might as well talk. It’s a long night ahead.

“My aunt,” Zayn continues, haltingly. It sounds like he’s composing the story in his head before the words fall out, like what he wants to say isn’t entirely the truth, and he’s working so hard to obscure everything that Louis almost hates that he’ll immediately be able to spot any lie. Humans are easy to read; Zayn’s skipped heartbeat will be a dead giveaway from the first false word. “I went to her when the visions started, I didn’t understand them. I thought I was dying, going mad, I don’t know. I’d see things, and the next day, the next week, I’d see them happen again in real life. I just wanted answers. She- she’s not a _witch,_ I don’t care what that… that _demon_ says, but she. She had this book, um.”

“A spellbook,” Louis prompts.

“No, no, not a spellbook, just a normal book with… spells in it,” Zayn finishes lamely.

“Right,” Louis says, feeling his mouth twitch before he can stop it.

“So my aunt had this book,” Zayn tries again. “And we- _she_ was just trying a few things, we- no _she_ turned a strip of my hair blonde-“

“Zayn,” Louis interrupts, grinning. “I think we should just drop the pretense, yeah? You and your aunt were doing spells, it’s fine. In fact, I think it would be hypocritical of me to say otherwise.” The grin slides off his face a little, and he’s not quick enough to catch it. “And it’s definitely not something that should have two demons chasing you down like they’re going to pull you to Hell for doing a bit of spellwork.”

“That’s not-“ Zayn breaks off, ruffling a hand through his hair. “That’s not… why they’re here, I think.”

Louis takes a moment to absorb that, adjusts his shoulders against the hard edge of the windowsill. “Okay. What happened next, then?”

“It- it reacted to me. The magic,” Zayn explains haltingly. “It didn't do what the spell was meant to do, it did exactly what I was thinking at the moment. My aunt tried a protective barrier spell and all I could think about was how the circle she drew looked like the mouth of a well, and suddenly she was standing in a perfect cylinder of water.”

“Like a well,” Louis murmurs.

“Exactly. And it did that every time. When she read off the Latin for the spells, I would have to read the description to myself over and over, so I could focus on what the spell was supposed to do instead of a fleeting thought that could ruin it. We were so careful.”

The dark tilt to those words doesn't go unnoticed. “Until you weren't anymore,” Louis guesses.

“We got careless,” Zayn says. “A friend of a friend caught us, turned us into the military guard for a ransom price. They don't like people causing trouble.” His voice turns bitter and cold, old coffee grounds and stale smoke.  “They put us in separate cells in the jail, but we were right next to each other so we planned a way out, talking through the vent in our shared wall. She'd draw out a simple spell, I'd think about how to channel the magic into our miraculous escape. We plotted it all out, hid nails and bits of wood and rocks for makeshift weapons, and she found she could cut her palm on a jagged bit of broken wall to jumpstart the spells.”

He shifts, expression troubled. Louis feels the little fidgeting motion like a twist in his stomach, because this story ends with Zayn and his family fleeing from two demons by dark of night, which can only mean there's no happy ending here.

“We ran out of time,” Zayn continues, words empty of emotion. “They came to take us somewhere earlier than expected. I didn’t know where they were taking us, then; I thought the firing squad, the noose, maybe. So we improvised. My aunt drew out the spell on the floor and would yell for me, and I'd concentrate a blast of magic wherever we needed it. I'd think ‘ankle’ and a guard’s bone would snap. I'd think ‘hole’ and the floor would fall through. It was working, but to keep firing off spells my aunt had to keep opening her palm, laying her hand on the incantation she'd carved into the floor.” He shudders with an indrawn breath, and Louis rests his shin against Zayn’s, a silent press of support. “She ran out of blood, eventually. There were a lot of guards.”

He says it dully, like it was a punishment and surviving it was his crime.

“When she passed out, the guards came in and took me,” Zayn murmurs. “They didn’t even care about my aunt, never even wanted her, I don’t think. They took me to the courtyard and there was- there was a pyre.”

Oh, oh no. Burning witches has mostly fell out of fashion since that fiasco in Salem, but some of the older parts of the world still do it. A decent witch usually won’t be caught, but beginners, or witches down on their luck, they’re just as susceptible to fire as everyone else.

“They- they were going to,” Zayn swallows. “I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to do, I was panicking. I thought I was going to die.” He reaches out, grabs Louis’ wrist, stares at him beseechingly. “I thought I was _dead,_ Louis.”

Louis squeezes Zayn’s hand in reassurance. “What happened?”

“There was no spell drawn out, so I don’t know how, but somehow,” Zayn shrugs. “The fire exploded out, killed almost all the guards. I ran, as soon as the men holding me fell I ran, through a hole blasted into the wall by the fire. I snuck back to my family and we’ve been hiding, moving around in the night to gather supplies and arrange transport for the last week. But tonight…” he trails off, waving his hand at the alleyway below, where Harry and Nick had chased them down. 

“I don’t know what they want,” Louis admits. “I don’t know what they would do with you, if they had you. Well, it wouldn’t be _them,_ the two you met tonight. They’re harmless, it would be their bosses.”

“Why would demons want _me_?”  

“Prophets are valuable,” Louis tells him. “When you learn to control your visions, they’ll get stronger, last longer. You’ll see entire futures.”

Zayn nods carefully. “And they can’t be allowed to have that,” he finishes. He looks, once again, resigned to it all, his chin tilting up like he’s baring his throat. “I understand.”

Louis’ brow furrows. “What are you doing?”

“Tell my parents it was necessary,” Zayn says, voice trembling, his eyes falling shut. “Tell them they can go back home, now. I won’t be the one to lead them to their deaths. And make it quick, please.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Zayn.”

Zayn’s eyes snap back open. “Why not? It’s the easiest way. If my family can live because I die, so be it.”

Louis feels his own eyes flash. “ _No one_ is being murdered. That’s not going to happen.”

“I don’t know if you missed this part,” Zayn says. “But we have _demons_ after us. And I may not know much about this life, but I know demons aren’t going to just give up.”

“No, they aren’t,” Louis admits. “But it’s not always kill or be killed. We can talk, we can figure something else out.” Nick might have objections, but Louis knows Harry won’t do anything rash.

“You trust them,” Zayn says.

“I do.”

“And you think we’ll be safe around them. That _I’ll_ be safe.”

“Yes.”

Zayn rakes a hand through his hair. “Do I have another option?”

“You can go,” Louis offers. “Try to sneak out and follow through with your original plan. But it won’t just be humans after you anymore, it’ll be humans and demons and angels, too. And the immortal crowd is a pretty difficult group to avoid.”

Zayn is quiet for so long that Louis thinks he might have dropped off to sleep right there at his spot on the windowsill. Louis himself doesn’t need any sleep — he slept last night, that’ll tide him over for a week or so — and he’s ready to pass a few hours making sure this family stays safe, from humans now instead of demons, increased patrols probably out in droves looking for their escapee.

But then Zayn’s voice appears again. “You love that demon, don’t you,” he asks, though it’s more of a confirmation than a question.

“More than I even understand,” Louis says honestly.

“But he’s your opposite, right? You’re on two different sides of a war.”

“Ah, but war is long,” Louis tells him. “And there are no winners except the ones calling the shots who never get their hands dirty, and we on the ground have no influence over them or their decisions. What does it matter that we wear different uniforms, when in the end we all lose?”

Zayn looks frustrated, tired and rundown. “I don’t understand.”

“Look,” Louis says. “I was born into this, and Heaven is the worst for nepotism. Until I’m killed, I keep my job, and nothing will stop that. It’s mostly metaphorical at this point anyway. But Harry? He started at the bottom of the toughest ranks in the universe. He’s worked his way out of the depths of Hell, quite literally, to claw himself into a position where he has a little power and authority. Hell has no rules, no real ranks, and he’s in constant danger of someone slitting his throat to steal his spot.” He shrugs, the violence of the words tempered by the casual tone. “I’ll never ask him to stop doing what he needs to survive, and that means taking on jobs that go against what I believe. When he succeeds, he gets more powerful, and he’s harder to hurt. That’s all I want.”

“What did you mean, ‘in the end we all lose’?” Zayn asks quietly.

Louis smiles sadly at him. “Soldiers don’t win wars, my friend. Soldiers die for causes, and governments reap the rewards. At the end of everything, the most I can ask is that I lived as long and as well as I could with the love of my life and my family around me.”

It’s quiet again for a long time, and when Zayn starts snuffling quietly in his sleep, Louis carries him over to his family, settles him among the waiting embraces. They’re all exhausted, and Louis isn’t going to interrupt their sleep.

Night passes. A regiment of soldiers passes under the window, one of them looking up and seeing Louis. He might’ve caused trouble just for the sake of trouble, but Louis flared his eyes fire-red and the man looked away, his heartbeat thumping in fright, and they continued unhindered.

At dawn, Zayn’s father wakes, and takes the spot where his son had sat for hours the night before. He and Louis don’t speak, but they don’t need to. The city wakes around them, British officers in their uniforms taking up residence on the streetcorners, street vendors setting up their stalls. A thin-boned man with an aged stoop to his shoulders sits at the mouth of the alleyway where Harry appeared last night, pulling out a shiny pair of scissors. One at a time, small, dirty children approach him, handing over bits of food and drink in exchange for haircuts and a few kind words before they’re sent away.

There’s a nudge against Louis’ mind, Harry’s familiar presence, and it’s vaguely questioning. _Is it time?_ he seems to be asking, so Louis nudges back a _yes._

“Wake your family,” Louis tells Zayn’s father. “They’re on the way.”

When Harry steps into the flat, flanked by Nick, Zayn and Louis are sitting in the middle of the room on the small pile of blankets where the family slept. Zayn’s parents and sisters sit nearby, watching with careful, sharp eyes. Zayn’s youngest sister is being held back by her mother, like she itches to clamber into Zayn’s lap, to get between him and the threat in the room.

“So much tension in one room,” Nick says lightly. His eyes flick black; an intimidation tactic. Louis rolls his eyes in answer.

“Stop posturing and sit. We have something to discuss.”

Nick sits gracefully, Harry less so, and Louis tucks away a smile. For a moment they watch each other, then Nick says, “What will you take for him?”

“What, like a bargaining piece?” Louis asks. “What are you able to offer?”

Zayn stiffens next to him, and Louis presses his knee against him to keep him quiet.

“A lot,” Nick admits. “The bigs want him bad.”

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing I need,” Louis says, picking idly at his nails. “Nothing you can offer, anyway. Got all I want.” He winks at Harry.

“Stop flirting for five seconds,” Nick growls. “This is _serious,_ Louis. This is Hell’s first chance at an unguarded prophet in decades. They want to know what’s going on so badly they’ll do anything for him. I can’t just let you walk away with him.”

“If we don’t get him now,” Harry adds quietly, beseechingly, “they’ll assign us to finding wherever you hide him. He won’t ever be able to leave any safe place you create for him. He’ll be trapped, him and his family, for the rest of his life.” He turns to Zayn, eyes bright green and disarming in the summer sunlight. “Or you can come with us now. We’ll protect you as much as we can, we have a lot of power we can wield.”

Louis weighs that for a moment. Harry’s right, he and Nick _could_ help a lot. If Hell wants Zayn this badly, Louis will have to set up a permanent perimeter to make sure he’s safe. It would be a huge undertaking, and it would mean his family living in isolation forever. Louis flicks his gaze up, and Nick and Harry are both watching him now, hope edging in on their expressions.

Louis sighs. “You can’t guarantee his safety.”

Nick’s shoulders loosen. “We’ll do whatever we have to, Louis. I swear.”

“No!” comes a sudden shout. Zayn’s youngest sister is ripping herself out of her mother’s hold and sprinting across the room. In seconds she’s at Harry’s side, yanking the ornamental knife she’d been admiring the night before out from under her blouse, holding it to Harry’s throat. Nick and Louis freeze.

“Safaa!” Zayn barks. “No!”

Safaa is shaking, her eyes wet. “You can’t take him,” she says, voice barely a scraping whisper.

A sliced throat wouldn’t kill Harry, not with an unblessed weapon, but it would mean he would be out of commission while he healed, and it would be painful to boot. Louis’ arm itches to reach out and smack the weapon out of Safaa’s hands, but Harry reaches across the invisible boundary between his side and Louis’ like he can hear that thought, and he presses his knuckles to Louis’ shin. _No,_ Louis can almost hear in his head. _Let me._

“Safaa? Is that your name?” Harry asks. Safaa’s eyes tighten, her grip as well. “That’s beautiful. Very fitting.”

Harry’s disarmingly charming at the very worst of times, but Safaa doesn’t seem as enthralled as Harry’s usual targets. Her mouth twists, hands still shaking.

“Safaa, we don’t want to hurt your brother,” he promises quietly, the truth so plain Louis knows even the humans can pick it out. “It’s not his fault he was born a prophet. We don’t want to punish him for that.”

“What will happen to him?”

“Hopefully nothing,” Harry answers softly. “In the best case scenario, he would stay with you and the rest of your family. When he has visions, he lets us know what he sees. That’s it.”

“What’s the worst case scenario?” Safaa demands. “You say you’re powerful, but you’re not the top of the chain. What happens if you don’t get a say?”

“Safaa,” Zayn murmurs.

Harry looks up, meets her eyes. “I don’t know. Perhaps he’d have to go Below and stay there, I’m not sure. We were supposed to take him and then get further instructions.”

A tear leaks out of the corner of Safaa’s eye, pausing and wobbling on the edges of her long lashes. “I don’t want that.”

“We don’t either,” Harry repeats. For a moment, they stare at each other. Then, carefully, Harry smiles.

“What?” Safaa says.

“You just remind me of my own sister,” Harry says. “She was always scared for me, too. And she was always willing to go above and beyond to keep me safe.”

“But you turned into a demon,” Safaa says.

“I did,” Harry agrees. “And your brother is a prophet. Sometimes sisters can’t fix those things. So let someone else protect Zayn for a little while. Let us help you keep him safe.”

Safaa’s lip trembles, but she slowly pulls the knife from Harry’s throat. Louis lets out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, squeezes Harry’s hand where his knuckles still brush Louis’ leg. Safaa steps backward and Zayn easily sweeps her into his lap, curled close to his chest. He gently tugs the knife from her hands, then tosses it aside.

“So,” Nick says, almost bemusedly. “Another stalemate.”

He’s right. Louis can’t easily let Zayn just go and be claimed for the Dark, not when he was born with powers that should never fall into evil hands. And for all Nick and Harry’s assurances that Zayn would be safe, they don’t actually know. There’s no way forward without someone losing.

Unless.

“What if…” he trails off, an idea slowly formulating. “What if he doesn’t belong fully to either side?”

“Then both sides will still be after him,” Harry says, frowning. His throat has an angry red line across it, but it’s fading back to pale as he speaks.

“Not if both sides think they have him fully,” Louis says, and Nick’s eyebrows go up.

“A secret allegiance?”

“To both sides,” Louis agrees, leaning forward. “You go back down Below, say you’ve got him, but say to keep me from stealing him back you had to promise he’d stay with his family. You pass along his visions when you feel like your bosses need to hear them. I do the same thing.”

“So we’re the ones making the judgement call,” Harry says, lips lifting a little in the corners.

“Not all information needs to be widespread,” Louis says. He lets his own hopeful grin slide into place. “Look. I like this kid. I want to keep him.”

Harry’s grin twitches into something more natural, and Nick rolls his eyes long-sufferingly. “You’re picking up another pet? _Again_ , Louis?”

“No, Nicholas,” Louis shoots back. He looks over at Zayn, who looks cautiously optimistic. “A new family member.”

It’s sealed in blood; one palm sliced with the ornamental blade and he shakes hands with Harry, the other palm cut and he shakes hands with Louis. His soul goes murky, like when paint mixes together and comes out brown; Zayn makes a face at that when Louis mentions it, but Nick reckons it’ll even out when his body processes the tiny bit of demon and angel blood.

“What’s next?” Zayn asks, smiling at Safaa as she clucks at his hands, winding bandages around his palms.

“Next we get you and your family somewhere safe,” Louis tells him. “The guard will still be looking for you, but word won’t spread beyond the city. We’ll release a rumor that you died trying to cross into Uttarakhand. You’ll be safe as long as you keep your head down.”

“And if I need to reach you?”

Harry grins, turning over his palm and tapping the clean white bandage. “Don’t worry, we’ll know. We’re family now.”

 

* * *

 

_Chandigarh, Haryana, British Indian Empire (modern day Pakistan) | 1869_

On Zayn’s twenty-fourth birthday, as Niall cheerfully charms Zayn’s parents and Harry and Safaa huddle together to whisper secrets that have them both giggling, Zayn pulls Louis off to the side and asks about a particular spell he ran across in one of his aunt’s old books. They discuss the options with Harry and Niall later, when Zayn’s family is distracted, and the four of them agree it’s the best choice. The spell is put into effect that very night, under the light of a gibbous moon, Zayn painted in old symbols and new blood as a little bit of his humanity is stripped away.

He never turned twenty-five, and after his parents and sisters all passed on (after happy, full long lives that Zayn spent every minute witnessing, living and breathing and celebrating with them), Zayn officially relocated to London and never once looked back.

 

* * *

 

_Dublin, Ireland | April 2016_

“This is nice, innit?” Ed asks easily, slumped against one end of Niall’s sofa. It’s the first family dinner in a month that almost everyone had been able to attend — even all of Louis’ sisters are here, with the twins braiding Jesy’s hair, Fizzy watching TV next to Ed, and Lottie exchanging gossip with Eoghan. Despite any misgivings, the atmosphere is as relaxed and content as could possibly be (which Niall chalks up to his hosting skills, though Louis thinks it’s more likely that they’re all just so relieved to see each other alive that they can put aside petty squabbling and nonsense for another week).

Louis takes a deep drink from his mug of perfectly brewed tea, the warmth sliding down his throat to rest somewhere lower, the heat just as lazy as Louis feels right now. He’s got Zayn curled on one side of him, half-asleep with his nose buried in a book that smells like dust and old ink, and Harry on the other, his feet in Louis’ lap and his shoulders resting against Liam’s chest.

Liam and Harry have had a lot of alone time in the past month (and Harry has started calling it their Broginning, despite Louis’ profound disagreement that a word like that should ever exist), trying to get to a place where Liam doesn't feel jumpy in Harry's presence and Harry doesn't feel the need to sit in places with strategic exit points when the two of them are alone together. It's tentative but it's made things settle, somewhat. Things are less shaky when the family foundation — the five guys propping up all the rest — are firm.

It helps that the angel from Liam's regiment that Harry was accused of kidnapping, Andy, was found bleeding and in agonizing pain but blessedly alive not four days ago. His memory had been wiped, the only thing he remembered being a pair of wide black eyes just like the angels kidnapped and found before him, but Louis talked to the Thrones and passed on his suspicion that the victims of the random attacks have been given false memories. His testimony had stalled the outrage, and while angels and demons still pace at their boundaries, there's no outright war yet.

That’s tentative, too. Everything at this point is like walking on tenterhooks, like crossing a minefield with no map.

“S’nice,” Harry mumbles in agreement with Ed a few moments later, twitching a little when Louis traces the ticklish spot above the bone of his ankle. He’ll be asleep in a few minutes, and Louis spends a moment lazily considering whether they should just crash here at Niall’s for the night, or if he has the energy to teleport himself and Harry back to London and their flat. That thought is interrupted, though, by Lottie’s voice.

“Eoghan,” she says, pushing at his shoulder. “Eoghaaaan. Hey.” She snaps her fingers playfully in front of his face and he catches her wrist, stilling her. He’s staring at the door. So is Amy, Louis has noticed, and slowly the rest of the conversation drops off.

Niall’s in the kitchen, gathering up more snacks, and Louis has the weirdest lurch in his stomach telling him to go, make sure he’s safe. Zayn’s book snaps shut and he follows Louis, both of them sighing in relief at Niall dancing a little in the kitchen, humming and cutting more slices of cheese for the hors d’oeuvres tray.

“Hey, lads,” he smiles when he sees Zayn and Louis in the doorway, Harry and Liam crowding up behind them. “What’s up?”

But then he stills, too, and even Zayn with his still-human ears could probably hear the deliberate, heavy footsteps outside the front door. Then, so purposeful that Louis gets a chill, there are two hard knocks against the wood of the door.

“No,” Niall says, brow furrowed. “That’s not- no.”

Eoghan and Amy appear behind Harry and Liam, looking terrified. “Niall,” Amy whispers. “Is that-?”

“Ed,” Louis calls softly into the living room. “Can you-?”

Ed’s the first one to finish a sentence. “Sure, Lou. Girls?” He holds out a hand to the twins, Fizzy and Lottie shooting Louis worried looks before they lay their hands on Ed’s forearms too. The five of them disappear, and Louis’ worry ebbs the smallest bit knowing they’re somewhere far from here when trouble’s brewing.

Amy and Eoghan stay, but once Ed goes that’s the cue for everyone else to leave too; there are whispered promises to check in later and anxious, scared glances meeting across the room. They’re all worried, everyone’s worried, because whatever is outside the door can only spell danger.

Niall absently dusts his hands off and makes his way, slowly, to the door.  His hand shakes when he reaches out, lays his palm to the doorknob.

“Niall, wait,” Harry hisses. “Should one of us answer instead?”

Niall doesn't even seem to hear. He closes his eyes, let's out a pained exhale, and then the door swings open wide.

“Bressie,” Niall says weakly. “What's wrong?”

Bres, his wide shoulders filling the doorway, beautiful and tall and strong like the legends of old come to life, smiles so sadly that Louis feels it like a punch to the ribs.

“Hey, Nialler,” he murmurs softly, oddly diminished with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, out of place without his armor. “I think you need to come home.”

“Why?” Niall asks, hand reaching out to take Liam’s, who's the closest to him. “Bres, what's wrong?”

Bressie’s weak smile trickles away, and he ducks his chin. Then, his royal upbringing shining through as he straightens his shoulders, he says, “There's been a death at Court. You're needed.”

“There have been deaths since I left,” Niall says hoarsely. “Why me? Why this one?”

For the first time, Bressie’s gaze leaves Niall's and roams around the little group confronting him at Niall's door. His eyes brighten in recognition at Amy and Eoghan, and he nods at Louis and Harry, who've both known Bressie for ages. His eyes find Liam and Zayn next, and that's where they stay.

“Because,” he says. “This one’s different.”

 

* * *

 

The Court of the Tuatha is a series of underground caverns and rock-sided chambers, entire cities of demigods and their assorted allies grouped together in spacious magic-carved caves. Miles of tunnels connect each Tuatha city, and they had easy access to the world above ground through exits from the tunnels placed every few miles. Over time, castles and villages were built up above at these exits, and for millennia the Tuatha lived and warred for Ireland from above ground and below, with no thought to any other peoples except themselves and anyone who chose to cross them.

Niall's parents built one of those castles, and so he grew up living half underground and half under the wide Irish skies, where his curiosity was insatiable and his family was large and sprawling. Bressie lived with his mother until he was called forward to sit as king at Dún Aonghasa, a grim fortress on the edge of the sea, impenetrable as it was foreboding.

But as time went on, the Tuatha’s castles and villages were overtaken by humans, no longer terrified by the mysticism and arcane magic of old world legends, no longer believing in sea guardians or family gods or men like Bressie who stormed battlefields and bled blessed blood. The fortress, Bressie’s ancestral fortress, was abandoned and deemed a historical site by humans who thought they'd found something their own ancestors had left behind. Other dwellings were demolished for highways and supermarkets and shopping malls, human civilization growing over the ashes of the Tuatha’s.

Still, the entrances to the Tuatha caverns continue to exist, though many have been caved in and smoothed over so humans don’t come looking for trouble. The one at Dún Aonghasa is one of the last left open and the easiest to find, and so when Louis blinks his eyes open and lets go of Bressie’s arm, he’s not surprised that that’s where he finds himself.

The wind off the ocean howls and cuts, as though it recognizes that old royalty has returned to the fold, and Zayn shivers as he pulls his coat tighter around himself. The rest of them — even Bressie, who looks surprised at himself for it — reach out and lay hands on their token human, feeding him warmth and energy they don’t need. Zayn, too used to this treatment after two hundred years around overprotective immortals, just grins long-sufferingly at his feet and keeps walking.

They tromp across the grounds of the ancient fortress in a straggling line, following Niall and Bressie across wet grass and crumbling stone fences until they reach a massive boulder, like a bone from the earth that’s been uncovered. There are runes scratched onto the surface; humans could never see them, but they’re there, and when Bressie lays his palm over them they glow brightly.

Louis gets a bit of mud on his jeans when he follows Liam down into the hole that appears, but he supposes that’s the least of his worries.

“Is it insensitive to ask who died?” he asks quietly, even though everyone around him has enhanced hearing except Zayn, who’s walking so close he doesn’t need the extra help. Bressie stiffens, but he doesn’t immediately run his sword — which reappeared when they stepped underground — through Louis, so he’ll take that as a win.

“Lugh,” Bressie finally admits after a few more minutes. “Lugh died.”

Niall lays a hand on Bressie’s arm, familiar and grounding in a way Louis remembers well. He’s never quite asked Niall just how deep this _thing_ with Bressie runs (though, if pressed, he could give a pretty good guess at exactly how Niall was able to cope with the love of his life dying all those centuries ago) but he’s curious all the same. Louis knows that the secrets Niall keeps locked up tight are secrets because he doesn’t like to think about them, not because he doesn’t trust his friends with the information.

The entrance next to the massive boulder opens up to a wide, primeval staircase, the edges of the stone steps worn from thousands of years of booted feet. A soft glow emanates from the ceiling, though there aren’t any candles or torches in sight — magic, pure magic, lingers in areas where immortals gather, and Louis stares up at it as they descend, the light twisting into unknowable shapes.

At the bottom of the steep staircase is a brighter glow, and as they approach Louis can see the shape of a great city appearing from the underground gloom, lit by firelight and magic. It’s ancient and wild here, vine-covered structures so natural that they feel like they could’ve grown this way, though Louis can see the stylistic flourishes around the carved-out doorways and windows. The buildings are ringed around a small lake in the center of the cavern, and it’s so quiet Louis can hear the ripple of tiny waves against the shore.

“Wow,” Liam whispers, looking awestruck, and Louis almost laughs, but he remembers the first time Niall brought him here and his reaction wasn’t much different. There’s something in the air that feels like fate weighed down, like the air is heavy with purpose. As though they were meant to be there at that exact moment, seeing the city under Dún Aonghasa as it’s meant to be seen.

“This way,” Bressie says, leading them to one of the houses nearest the entrance. He pushes aside a heavy wooden door, carved with an ancient family crest, and then leads them into a smaller room after that. The awestruck grins slide off everyone’s faces.

In the center of the room, laid across a stone table, is a large, wide-shouldered man who looks as though he lost his life in a fight with an active volcano. His face is peaceful in death, but the rest of him is not; his clothing is in tatters, blackened and ripped. His sword, laid across his chest, is flame-warped and crusted in blood. But what makes Louis gasp, makes Harry put a hand to his mouth in fear and makes Niall scramble backwards against the solid wall of Bressie, is the man’s chest.

More specifically, the hole there, blackened and charred just like his clothes, as though someone with a hand of fire reached in and scooped out his heart.

“Oh,” Niall says weakly. “Different. I see.”

“We don’t know who did it,” Bressie says, his hand clenching. “How they got in, how they got past the enchantments or the doorways. How they- how they did _this,”_ he growls, gesturing to Lugh’s chest.

Zayn takes a careful look around the room and waves his hand, and a sheet appears and unfolds out of thin air, draping itself over Lugh’s form so they don't have to look at it anymore. Bressie’s hand unclenches, and Niall takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” he says, “okay. Any ideas?” he asks Louis desperately.

“Besides thinking that it has to have something to do with the rest of the mess we’ve been dealing with?” Louis asks, running a frustrated hand through his hair. “No, not really.”

“There’s something else,” Bressie says, and it’s almost apologetic. “Niall, your… your family’s home. It’s gone.”

Niall staggers again, this time guided by Liam into a chair. “Gone? What- what do you mean, gone?”

“Burned,” Bressie elaborates. “There’s nothing left.”

“You can’t burn stone,” Harry points out.

“That’s what I always thought too,” Bressie says. “But it’s all ash now.”

Something about that pings at Louis’ mind, begging for attention, but he can’t look away from the sheet; he was a good man, Lugh. Louis had met him before, had stayed with his family multiple times. His battle skills were legendary; whoever did this had to have taken him by surprise to overpower him, possibly even an ambush.

“They’ve upped their game,” he muses out loud, walking closer to Lugh under the sheet. “Before, they were just planting false memories somehow, trying to blame others for what they did. But this?” He gestures widely. “This feels like a message.”

Niall makes a terrible noise, and Liam wraps his arm around his shoulders. “I don’t like this,” he says worriedly, rubbing at Niall’s elbow soothingly.

“Nobody _likes_ it, Liam,” Zayn snaps. “That’s why we have to figure out how to stop it.”

“But how?” Harry asks. “All we’ve got to work with is a bit of a vision, the name of a spellbook we thought we destroyed, and a line of people who are either dead or have been tricked into thinking innocent people attacked them.”

“There’s got to be more than that,” Louis says. “We’ve got a body covered in scorch marks, we’ve got an entire burned down castle.” He bites his tongue when Niall makes that terrible noise again, and his own stomach lurches when he thinks of the years he and Niall spent there, each recuperating and surviving in their own ways before they got back to actually living. “There’s more, there’s a pattern, we just have to find it.”

So they sit and, for the first time, they talk about every single thing they know. Hours and hours pass, night into morning, the city waking up outside Bressie’s door, and Harry writes down every little detail they can think up. Bressie helps where he can, adding details about Lugh’s death, but otherwise he sits and watches Niall like a man in the desert looks at water.

“Can…” Niall breaks into the conversation somewhere around dawn. “Can I see it? The house?”

At any other time Louis would be tossing jokes at Niall left and right about calling a castle a _house_ , as though it’s a quaint three-bedroom-two-bath in a suburb somewhere. But he won’t, because it’s _Niall’s_ _house;_ it’s where he grew up, it’s where his parents lived before war and sacrifice took them. It wasn’t an three-bed-two-bath in the suburbs but it’s where Niall learned to be Niall, where he fell in love, where he retreated when his love was stolen from him. Louis would knock a hole in the world if Niall asked; if he asked politely, Louis would split the whole fucking globe in half and give Niall the bigger side. He can hold in his jokes.                                                  

“Yeah, Ni,” Bressie says softly. “Of course.”

They’re gone for a few hours, while Louis, Harry, Liam, and Zayn stay at Bressie’s and continue researching, digging through Bressie’s small library for inspiration when they run out of ideas. By the time Bressie steps back in, closing the door quietly behind him and taking up residence by the window, they’ve got little more than wild accusations and a whole lot of dread.

“Where’s Niall?” Liam asks. Bressie nods his head out the open window.

“Someone recognized him,” he says, fondness cracking through his tone. “It’s been a long time since he visited.”

Louis stands and joins Bressie at the window, watching a small crowd form around Niall by the lake’s edge. He’s swamped with hugs and kisses, a prodigal son returned home, and his loud laugh rings out from time to time. “They miss him,” Louis says, rather unnecessarily but true all the same.

“We do,” Bressie agrees. He smiles down at his boots, but his eyes flick back up to watch Niall and his admirers after a few seconds as though he can’t help it. “Did he ever tell you how we met?”

Harry draws close too, leaning against Louis’ side. “No. What happened?”

“It was a festival,” Bressie says. “I don’t remember which one, for a while we were coming up with excuses to drink and feast every other week. But we were at his- his parents were hosting, so all the tables of the dining hall were dragged out into the field behind the castle. It was pretty typical, for us at least,” he says, and nudges Louis with his shoe, grinning. Louis hadn’t fared so well after a few of the Tuatha’s more “typical” parties in his early days with Niall. “Thought it was a little boring, actually, and was just about to head home when Niall’s mam called him up to sing for us.”

The smile that spreads across Bressie’s face is warm like a summer morning, and Louis finds himself mirroring it helplessly. Liam even chuckles a little in understanding. “That explains it, then,” he says ruefully, rubbing at his neck. “I think everyone falls a little bit in love with Niall when he sings.”

Bressie doesn’t even deny it. “Everyone did that day, too,” he laughs softly. “He had this harp — don’t laugh, it was amazing, made of pure gold — and he could’ve played us all into a trance if he wanted. He might have, actually. After he was finished, he had all these people around him clamoring for attention. Sort of like, well,” he gestured out the window, where Niall was still trying to extricate himself from the growing crowd. “But for some reason he hopped off the table he’d used as a stage and came straight for me instead.”

Louis can picture it as clearly as if he was there, Niall’s bravado and easy confidence, a ridiculous golden harp strapped carelessly to his back, wading through a crowd of onlookers to get to a dumbstruck Bressie.

“He said ‘You know, you’re supposed to present people with gifts if you liked their performance,’ and I knew he was joking. Well, I know _now_ ,” he admits, and Zayn chuckles. “But I was so tongue-tied. I was young, he was too, of course, much younger than me, but he didn’t act like it. I panicked, and shoved my drink at him and said, ‘Here. It was good.’” He shakes his head at himself as Louis stifles a laugh as well. “He decided I needed him around to make myself less terrible at social interaction, and I agreed.”

Niall’s laugh sounds again outside Bressie’s little home and it fits here, like a song made especially for this place; the warm walls are dark and cozy, draped with old threadbare tapestries and hung wood carvings in strange, unnatural shapes. It should’ve been cave-like, all damp corners and shadows, but it wasn’t. The chairs were overlaid with furs, the wood of the furniture shined smooth over years of use. It felt, inexplicably, like Niall’s flat, as though he had a hand in the decorating (or, perhaps, not that inexplicably, if Bressie had decorated with Niall in mind).

“I don’t know,” Bressie continues, his shoulders drooping a little. “I don’t know how much you know about our history. About our wars and treaties.”

Louis knows a little — was involved in some of it, even — but not the whole thing, and deities tend to keep their internal squabbles close to their chest once they’ve been resolved. “Not much,” Harry says quietly, and Bressie nods like that was expected.

“When I was young, right after I met Niall, actually, our king lost his hand in a battle. Kings can’t have any blemishes, be imperfect in any way, not in our world, and so he had to step aside. There was a search for someone to replace him, and.” He runs his hand through his hair, eyes shuttered. “It should’ve been Niall. I told him that, his father told him that, everyone said the same thing. He was young but- but _good,_ better than anyone could’ve been in that position. But he said no.” He scrubs his hand across his scalp again, this time rougher. Like a punishment. “When he said no, they picked me. And _I_ should’ve said no too, should’ve never been king. I was stupid, _immature,_ but they didn’t care so much about having someone to rule well when they had someone who _looked_ the part.” He gestures down at himself, almost in disgust.

“Why did Niall say no?” Liam asks quietly.

“Ah,” Bressie says, and if he was shuttered before, now he’s fully closed. “Well. The day I met Niall at the festival, he met someone else there, too.”

“Caer,” Louis realizes, and he tries hard to pull the sympathy from his tone before Bressie hears it.

“Aye, that’s when he met Caer. Loved her fiercely, he did, and she loved him just as much. Of course, if she hadn’t, there’d have been hell to pay, but she loved him so much it was obvious.”

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Harry says quietly, though he thumbs at Louis’ hip as though the words are for him, too. Louis almost doesn’t _want_ him to continue; Niall wouldn’t mind them hearing this, he knows that, but they’ve all been through their own kinds of heartbreaks, and Louis has learned that hearing someone else’s pain never quite lessens your own. Misery and company and all that, of course, but when the misery is that of someone you love, it’s just as painful.

“No, it’s. It’s important you hear it. You’re the most important people in his life, now,” Bressie says, and Louis tenses even if there’s no hint of anger there, just fond resignation. “When the kingship was offered, Niall said no because Caer had just died. He didn’t want much to do with any of us for a long while after that, but he let the regents approach him so he could deny them in person and they could move to their next choice. He always had high hopes for me,” he finishes softly. He shakes his head, penitent. “I didn’t live up to them, of course. I don’t blame him for staying away, but I could’ve used his guidance. I got into silly spats and revenge schemes, and by the time they found another king Niall had found someone else to focus his energy on, to help him get better.”

“Who?” Louis asks.

Bressie turns to him, eyebrows raised a little. “You,” he answers, like it’s obvious.  

The word swims through Louis’ mind like something foreign, and he can’t quite comprehend it. Niall never needed _Louis_ , it was always Louis reaching for Niall, staying at his home, meeting his friends. Niall had seemed so adjusted, even when he talked about Caer, that Louis never once thought he could still be struggling with it.

“Me?” he repeats dumbly. “That’s not-“

But the slow, impeccable machinery of his memory pulls up something Louis hasn’t thought about in a long time. He and Niall on the banks of the River Boyne, and Niall’s voice in his ear: _It doesn’t go away,_ he’d said, like he could feel the rushing tide of Louis’ pain in his chest for himself, _but it does lessen. Eventually._

Eventually. And maybe it’s Louis’ memory rewriting itself, but it doesn’t sound steady. The word doesn’t come out of Niall’s mouth like advice from his own experience. It sounds hopeful, instead. As though Niall was there in that moment thinking _maybe we’ll both someday be okay_.

“Oh, hell,” Louis whispers.

Niall chooses that moment to reappear in the doorway, his admirers finally shaken off. “So, lads,” he says, but doesn’t finish another word before Louis slams into him, wrapping him in a fierce, tight hug.

“Love you, Nialler,” he murmurs.

“Love you too, Lou,” he says automatically. “What’s going on?”

Instead of answering, Zayn asks, “Do you still have your harp, Ni?”

Niall laughs quietly, and when Louis pulls back he’s meeting Bressie’s gaze with a single raised eyebrow, faintly flushed with pleased embarrassment. “You’re still bandying around that old story?”

Bressie shrugs unrepentantly, grinning back. “It’s my favorite one.”

Niall ducks his head, still smiling. “Yeah, well. I have a guitar now, you pillock. No one uses harps anymore.”

 

 

The walk up the massive stone staircase back to fresh air and a warm morning takes ages, it seems, everyone drained and dragging from the long night. Niall and Bressie spend the entire walk back mumbling back and forth, and when they part ways the other four try to give them a little space, even with all the superhuman hearing between them.  

“You know, you _can_ come visit,” Niall says, raising his eyebrows. “And not just for bad news.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bressie allows. A scuffing sound, like he’s kicking bashfully at the dirt, then, “I miss you.”

Niall huffs a small, amused sound. “You utter sap.” But his cheeks are bright red when they jump back to his flat, and he keeps touching the place on his cheek where Bressie laid a small, chaste kiss as though maybe he can still feel it.

 

* * *

 

_London | April 2016_

The call comes on an otherwise unobtrusive Saturday afternoon, the damp sunlight after a morning rain shower trying its best to push through the windows, filtering down on Louis and Harry tangled on their sofa, the _One Tree Hill_ season three DVD playing on TV.

Louis taps the pause button on the remote and Sophia Bush freezes, mouth open mid-sentence. “Yeah?” he says, pinning his phone between his shoulder and his ear. From his spot between Louis’ legs, reclined back against Louis’ chest, Harry makes a sleepy noise of disagreement at the interruption to their day. “What's up, Payno?”

“Louis,” Liam says, and the urgency there is enough to strip the lazy contentment from his muscles. “You need to get here. Now.”

“What is it?” Harry asks, the tension in Louis’ body echoed in his.

Liam just says again, frantically, “Get here.” Then, quickly, like he knows their nearly vibrating with tension. “I think I found another one of those spellbooks.”

Louis doesn't even bother ending the call; he and Harry spring from the sofa, throwing on the closest clothes they can find and hopping as they tug on their shoes. Louis closes his mind and reaches out for Liam’s presence — he can feel every angel in London, their souls like starry pinpricks as far as he can see, but he’s familiar enough with Liam’s that he picks it out within seconds, and he reaches for Harry's hand.

“I should stop suggesting we watch _One Tree Hill_ ,” he bemoans as the world tilts around them, throwing them across London. “It must be bad luck.”

They land with the slightest stumble next to Liam, who’s crouching on the sloped roof of a block of flats, peering with narrowed eyes at the building next door. It’s a mild spring day, and every flat has its windows flung wide open, stealing bits of the breeze, all except one. Whatever is inside that flat in particular is hidden by thick curtains, velvet or something else heavy enough that Louis can’t even get a reading on who might be inside.

“There’s a ward around the whole place,” Liam mutters instead of saying hello, shifting over a little so Harry can crouch next to him at the edge of the building. “I don’t think I can get in, not on my own.”

“Did you try Zayn?” Louis asks. “We might need him.”

“No,” Liam admits. “I don’t like the thought of him being in the middle of the action. We’ll heal from just about anything, but he-”

“He’s breakable, but not made of glass,” Harry comforts him, hand on Liam’s wrist. “Plus, I think we could use him here. Niall too, maybe. He’ll want to know after…”

After the event that made Bressie appear on his doorstep for the first time in a good hundred years, yeah.

“I’ll get them,” Harry says.

“We’ll work on finding a way in,” Louis says, and Harry nods and spins on the spot, disappearing. “Did you get close?”

“No. I don’t like the way it feels,” Liam says roughly, and that’s an understatement. Louis was going to ask how he noticed the place, but being this close makes it obvious. If Liam was out on patrol anywhere in the vicinity, the dark, sick feeling emanating from the flat would have easily caught his attention.

“There’s something weird about that book,” Louis murmurs. “The place is warded like crazy and we can still feel the wrongness of it from a building away.”

“What does that mean?” Liam asks worriedly.

“Honestly?” Louis asks, and then shrugs. “Either the book is way more powerful than Harry and I thought when we flipped through it the first time, or the people using those spells are the ones with all the power. But it definitely didn’t seem like those kids in the basement were some sort of magical prodigies.”

Liam hums in thought, and then he suggests jumping over to the building to see if the wards have any weaknesses. Louis agrees and blinks them over to the hallway outside the flat’s front door, which is so heavily protected that he can’t get his hand within inches of the doorknob. The windows are the same way, they find, after quickly scaling down from the roof and hanging from the windowsill of the flat above it.

“Wait, Lou,” Liam says, peering up at the flat above them instead of down at their target. “Smell that?”

Louis frowns, but takes a deep breath. A sharp, chemical scent hits him. “What, wet paint?”

“Yeah, I think- look,” he says, and then hauls himself up and into the flat.

“Liam!” Louis hisses, waiting for the inevitable scream as someone notices the superhuman who just flung himself in through the open window, but none comes. After a moment, Louis pulls himself up and inside too. The room is empty, tarps on the floors and a fresh coat of olive green up on the walls, and Liam looks inordinately proud.

“Huh,” Louis says, impressed. “Good idea, Leemo.”

They pace the floor of the empty flat for only a few moments — discussing floor plans and the likelihood that the flat they’re trying to get into it set up exactly like this one — when Harry reappears, holding Niall and Zayn’s hands.

“Oh, yikes,” Niall says, wincing. “The awfulness coming off that book wasn’t so bad in Zayn’s vision.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely worse up close,” Zayn agrees. “Okay, what have we found?”

“There’s no way we’re getting through the door without working on cutting through those wards for hours, at least,” Liam fills him in. “The windows are out, too. I’d say busting through a wall might be tough to pull off, but it seems likely that the wards on the ceiling will be the weakest.”

“Hmm,” Zayn says, nodding slowly. “Most wards and permanent protections are on the floor, not the ceiling, because it’s easier to paint or carve it that way. Ceilings are really only used when the person is trying to hide it, because people don’t tend to look up immediately when entering a room.”

“So the ceiling is a good idea,” Liam sums up, and then grins when Zayn nods. “Okay, what do we do?”

They decide to go with a hope-for-the-best approach, which they all hate but they can’t really get around, since they have no idea what they’re going to drop into. If they didn’t need that book so badly, they wouldn’t even risk it; unfortunately, they _do_ need the book, and they have to trust that whoever is using it will be too startled to immediately retaliate.

“I’ll cut through the wards on three,” Zayn says, kneeling in the center of the floor. “Liam, Niall, you two create a way through the floor, Louis and Harry will lead the way inside.” They all nod, then Zayn brings a tiny pocket knife to his finger and pricks it, welling up just enough blood that he can trace out a simple rune on the floor. “Go!” he barks, and so Niall and Liam rear back and, at the same time, knock a hole through the wood and cement of the floor.

The moment there’s enough space, Louis and Harry leap through and land on the soft carpet of the flat below. There’s a shriek, and Harry’s across the room in a blur, wrapping one big hand around a woman’s wrists, the other hand going over her mouth. She struggles, but Harry’s grip is too strong.

“Lou, we can’t-“ Liam shouts in frustration, and Louis looks back up. It’s like the wards let Harry and Louis through, and sealed themselves back up afterwards. Liam stands over the hole, but there’s an invisible layer keeping him from falling through.

Louis sends his consciousness flying outward in a split second; he feels the edges of the ward like a bubble, containing them and a roiling cascade of magic within this flat. There are only two souls he can feel — Harry and the woman he’s restraining — and so he pulls his awareness back and opens his eyes, jumping across the room.

“Lower the wards,” he snarls at the woman. Her eyes are wide, tear tracks black with mascara running down her face. _“Now!”_

The woman shrieks again, but it’s muffled through Harry’s hand. She raises a shaky hand and draws a rune into the air, leaving a bright outline burned onto Louis’ vision like an afterimage, like the shapes left behind after a firework. The shape is familiar; a flame with a hand in the center, palm facing up. Louis wants to ask what that _means_ , where it comes from, but the second she finishes drawing out the hand Liam crashes to the floor, rolling onto his feet as Zayn and Niall follow through.

After that, things move quickly. The witch twists and sobs weakly in Harry’s grip, but he doesn’t let go. Liam and Louis go to check the other rooms in the flat, but it just confirms what Louis already knew, that there’s no one else here. Louis doesn’t relax, by any means, but it’s easier to think knowing there’s not a small army of witches hiding in a wardrobe somewhere waiting to ambush them.

“Please, I’m sorry, please,” the woman keeps crying through Harry’s makeshift gag, and he adjusts his grip so his hand is not quite so tight. Louis, meanwhile, goes straight for the spellbook. It’s just like he remembered the other one, all weird, mistranslated Latin and seemingly simple spells. The same strange Latin phrase on the front — _through fire, nature is conquered whole_ — and the same rune that the woman just drew in the air to release the wards. The same rune carved into the crooks of Harry and Louis’ elbows, as a matter of fact.

Louis tucks that question away and continues flipping through the pages. Nothing in this book could’ve created the strong wards on the door and windows, and Louis wonders if perhaps that means someone else has been here and set up a safe room for this woman to test her skills where (almost) no one would be able to get to her. Sort of like the disappearing weapon that carved the rune into Louis and Harry in the first place, there’s power missing from this room that should be here.

“The wards here are too strong to have come from this book,” Louis mutters to Liam when he approaches. “This place feels like it was being protected against an army’s worth of magic, but these spells,” he pats the book meaningfully, “aren’t anything like that.”

“Like some sort of precaution?” Liam asks under his breath.

“Or it’s an initiation,” he answers just as quietly. Zayn’s close enough he hears, and Niall and Harry share a look that says they got the gist, too. As one, they turn to the woman, potentially the only person with answers to a few of their questions.

“How did you get this book?” Harry asks, his slow tones as soothing as a demon could possibly be. The woman shudders.

“I don’t know anything, I don’t,” she swears, tears still pouring down her cheeks. “A friend from work said if I did what the book said, I’d be happier. I just- I just broke up with my boyfriend, I just w-wanted-“ She breaks off into sobs again, clutching at Harry’s arm.

Zayn turns, gives Louis a look that clearly says _she doesn’t know anything, I’m going to look for evidence._ Liam follows him, though he looks more suspicious, keeping his eyes on the woman until Zayn has fully left the room, then turning to follow him out.

Louis is leaning more towards Liam’s reaction. The woman is still crying, nearly in hysterics, but there’s some part of it that seems forced. She’s scared, that’s real, the panicked thunder of her heartbeat lending credence to some of her fear, but Louis isn’t sure if her reactions are some kind of terror-based survival instinct, or something else.

Her panic is there, right on the surface, pulled tight like a blanket, but it’s too perfect. Panic doesn’t perfectly cover all its bases like a shield, it’s unruly, unpredictable. Under that panic should be layer after layer of chaos to cause that kind of sobbing reaction, but instead there’s a careful, calm ocean of emotion that almost feels tucked away, not anywhere near hysteria under the surface of her fear.

“There’s nothing you can tell us?” Niall asks, voice neutral.

“Wh-why should I tell you anything?” the woman mumbles through hitches of breath. “I don’t know who you are, and you just _broke my ceiling_ to get into my flat.”

“We can’t tell you specifics,” Louis says. “Just that this book is dangerous, and that whoever gave it to you is dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” the woman asks tremulously. “It’s just a silly little book of fake magic, right? That’s what Denise told me. Just something fun, wave some incense around and pretend it’s healing my heartbreak.”

“Definitely not,” Harry says. He unwraps the woman’s hands from around his forearm. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Caroline.” She’s shaking, just a little, and as Harry steps away, Louis gets his first good look at her. Her blonde hair is pulled off her face but perfectly coiffed, like she just came off a TV set instead of lounging around her home. Her eyeliner and the heels of her boots are equally sharp, the cut of her blouse just slightly less than indecent. Still, with wet, wide eyes, and the shake of her hands, she comes off a lot less intimidating than she might have otherwise.

“Well, Caroline, let me talk to my friends for a moment and then we’ll be out of your hair,” Harry says kindly, as though he and the others dropped in for a social call instead of busting through part of a building to get to her. When he turns, though, the kind smile drops, something severe and worried underneath. “I don’t trust her,” he whispers, leaning close to Niall and Louis.

“I don’t either. She knows more than she’s letting on,” Niall says, all false confidence to cover the worry matching Harry’s.  

“And we all know that, sure,” Louis hedges, “but unless we’re willing to turn to something that goes against everything we’ve ever stood for” — morals, ethics, those don’t mean much to immortals, but promises and pacts do, and not torturing innocents was something decided long ago — “we should just take the book and go.”

Niall inhales deeply. “Yeah, yeah, alright.” He lets the breath out slowly, as though this whole thing has been an exercise for his nerves. “I’ll get Liam and Zayn.”

Harry steps close when Niall leaves, thumbing idly at Louis’ hip under the edge of his shirt. “What are you thinking?”

Louis flicks his glance over at Caroline, who is watching them carefully. She has to be scared, still — there’s enough evidence in play that she has to know she’s dealing with, at the very least, powerful humans, if not something even more than that. The spike of her heartbeat when she catches him watching must mean that she wants to pretend they’ve forgotten about her, that the’ll leave her in peace.

He can’t really blame her. In all reality, she probably knows her friend is a low-level witch, wanted to try a bit of magic herself, and is now scared that she and her friend will get in trouble, their punishments handed out by the five random men who crashed into her home. She’s not outright lying, he would’ve spotted that from a mile away — angelic privilege — but there are ways to get around that, if a person knows enough. Half-truths, lies by omission, those don’t speed a heartbeat like an obvious false claim. She could be absolutely playing them.

Louis, suddenly, feels exhausted. There are a hundred strings spanning this mess of a situation, and he and the other four have been killing themselves trying to keep up with every single one of them. The disappearances and the planted memories and the false accusations and the death of Lugh and the fear and the worry — it’s enough to drive anyone mad. For once, just once since this whole thing started, Louis wants this to go easily. He wants to take this book and open it perfectly to some sort of introductory page that will explain everything that has happened, and how to stop it.

It’s never that easy, but for once he hopes it will be.

“I’m thinking,” he tells Harry, just as Niall leads Zayn and Liam back into Caroline’s destroyed living room, then he corrects himself, “ _hoping,_ that maybe luck is on our side, just this once.”

 

* * *

 

_Kunduz, Afghanistan | AD 1991_

At some indefinable point in time, Harry and Louis’ adventuring around the globe goes from exploring new territory to re-learning old favorite haunts. The world changes more quickly than they can keep up, and they wander back to Bali, to Rome, to Paris, over and over again to see the ways the world is a little different every time they come back.

Sometimes, they’re somewhere they think is new only to find they’ve been there before. Like the little specialty boutique they stumble across in the Ginza District of Tokyo, only to find the building has been in the family for generations, and that Harry and Louis had visited once before back in the 1920s. Or the tiny pizzeria outside Naples, where Louis took one bite of margherita and remembered with a gasp that he had eaten that exact pizza before, when it was sold from an open-air stand beside a wide road dug deep with carriage wheels and horse hoof prints.

Usually, it’s not that dramatic. Usually they set out with the specific purpose of seeing an old favorite locale again, and some of Louis’ favorite days have been the ones he’s woken up to Harry’s grinning face inches from his, the excited whisper of _you know where we haven’t been in a while?_ and _you’re not busy today, are you?_

Even when he does have something to do, a new angel to introduce to the immortal world, a job handed down from the higher-ups, a demon to chase out of a sacred space, a protected human to keep safe, it doesn’t matter. He always says yes.

So, sure, it’s not typically that dramatic. But, just once, they _do_ figure out they’ve been somewhere before in the most dramatic way possible.

“Are you sure we can be here?” Louis hisses, following Harry out of the overwhelming sunlight beating down on their shoulders and into the dark interior of a crumbling monastery. Harry’s got his fatigues jacket tied around his waist like a Valley Girl, his white vest underneath soaked through with sweat. They’ve been away from camp long enough that his hair’s grown out of its standard-issue buzz, the short curls wild around his ears.

“We’re on a friendly recon mission,” Harry says automatically, as if it’s Louis he has to convince instead of whoever might be inside. “No one hurts the friendly translators.”

“Harry,” Louis groans. “Translators are killed just as often as anyone else in a war zone.”

Harry waves a hand like that’s irrelevant, and maybe it is, because it’s not like humans could actually kill them without a hell of a lot of pre-planning. Still, it’s the _principle_ of the thing.

Their eyes adjust to the dim entrance hall, catching on solid wood beams propping up a sagging ceiling. “I don’t think this place is structurally sound,” Louis whispers. A voice to their left startles them, making them curse and spin.

“We’ve been meaning to do repairs,” says a man in pleasantly accented English, his smile gentle. “Unfortunately, in a building as old as this one, trying to repair one problem can cause five more to appear.”

“It _is_ a beautiful building,” Louis comments politely once he’s over the surprise of coming across someone in a building this derelict. It's not even a lie; the swirling carvings along the ceiling are gorgeous, if dusty, and the faded paint on the walls shows beautiful scenery of the view right outside the monastery’s door, stark mountains and lush trees.

“It is,” the man agrees, nodding once in thanks. “Though it doesn't often see many visitors.” He lets the sentence trail off in question.

Harry straightens, then inclines his head in a casual bow. “We’re with Her Majesty’s Northumberland Fusiliers. I’m Private Styles, this is Private Tomlinson, we’re translators for the guard.”

He almost keeps composed at getting to use their fake Real Modern People names, though the corner of his mouth just barely twitches and Louis knows he’s bouncing on his toes in glee inside his own head, like a kid trying to con a substitute teacher with the wrong name.

(Though, Louis will admit, while it may not be his real name, something about _Harry Styles_ just rolls off the tongue.)

“Welcome, sirs,” the man bows his head again. “I am Yusuf. Please, let me get you something to drink, you’re surely thirsty.”

Louis and Harry accept gratefully, and they follow Yusuf down a dimly lit hall, high windows breaking up the dark every few feet. Yusuf is quiet, letting his guests gawk to their hearts’ content.

“Is there anyone else here?” Harry asks as they turn a corner and find an open courtyard, bright sun blinding them for a moment. At Harry’s question, Louis reaches out almost automatically, feeling the presence of about a dozen souls directly over their heads. The souls burst with youth and exuberance, and Louis finds himself grinning at the amount of energy pouring out of the second floor of this seemingly deserted building.

“We take in children who need assistance,” Yusuf says, motioning for their canteens. They hand them over and he keeps talking as he works the hand crank of an ancient well in the center of the courtyard. He fills their canteens with ease, and then tops up his own as well. “Not all of them are orphans, but many are.”

There’s a clatter of footsteps and a boy appears in the doorway, grinning brightly. “Yus! I drew a picture, come look!” he says in quick Dari, syllables rolled together.

The man laughs, and waves his hand. “Later, Yusuf. We have visitors.”

“His name is Yusuf too?” Louis asks as the little boy disappears back inside. The older Yusuf nods, smiling lightly. “That’s an interesting coincidence.”

“It might be, if it were one,” Yusuf laughs again. “Yusuf is the name given to any boys who show up on our doorstep without a name of their own.”

Louis feels his eyes widen in understanding. “So you were-“

“Just like them once, yes,” Yusuf says. He’s young, Louis notices for the first time, maybe in his mid-twenties, and he’s apparently running the very makeshift orphanage he grew up in. He beckons Harry and Louis after him, and they exchange awed glances — they’ve been on Earth for a long, long time, but humans can still surprise them with their ridiculous good hearts — before following him back inside to another room. This one is brighter than the dim hallway, high ceilings and an airy, open space. A cat reclines lazily in a patch of sunlight on the middle of a wide, overstuffed pillow.

“Why give the name Yusuf in particular to orphans?” Harry asks, taking a seat when Yusuf gestures for him to do so.

Yusuf takes a drink from his own canteen, then motions to the far wall, where the paint still looks almost new. “It’s an homage, one for this monastery’s most renowned son.”

Harry and Louis turn and see, for the first time, a massive painted fresco. A second later, they simultaneously choke on their drinks of water.

“Uh,” Louis says, clambering to his feet. His combat boots slip a little on the pillow and he doesn’t even notice, staring up at the painted version of his own face. His _real_ face, with the fire-eyes and the sigils up and down his arms, great star-wings spread out behind him.

“That’s…” Harry trails off. “That’s you. And me.”

Yeah, there’s Harry, too. Painted black-eyed and smokeskinned, veins of fire and a shiny diamond crown and all. The two of them stand like avenging heroes as a building burns in the background, and standing between them is-

“Yusuf,” Louis breathes, finally recalling the memory , and he reaches out to touch the inquisitive face, tracing where the boy’s little painted hand is tucked into Harry’s. “I didn’t recognize the place.”

“Me either,” Harry laughs, sounding amazed. And then he grabs Louis shoulder, says, _“Look.”_

In a glass case under the fresco, resting on a lifted pedestal, is Harry’s original drachma necklace, the one Niall had helped him pour his first glamour into so he could keep his human disguise. The one that fell off when they were rescuing Yusuf — the _original_ Yusuf — from the fire here in this exact building over a thousand years ago.

“Our lives,” Louis whispers, “are strange beyond even immortal standards.”

“So it _is_ you,” says Yusuf — the _new_ Yusuf — from behind them, sounding supremely unsurprised, and a little entertained.

“You knew it was us?” Harry asks in shock, waving his arms widely from himself and Louis to their painted alter-egos.

“I walk past that painting every day,” Yusuf shrugs. “And I meditate in here, sometimes. Your painting is the most interesting part of the room to focus on for a few hours.”

Louis wants to ask one of the thousand and one questions rattling around in his mind, but the first one that rolls out of him is, “Did Yusuf — not you, sorry, your namesake — did he… was he okay? After the fire?”

He doesn’t know what answer he expects; after all, he’s asking a guy born in the 1970s if someone who was in a fire in the thirteenth century had a decent life. But Yusuf’s smile stretches wide, as if he knew the question was coming.

“The original Yusuf lived a long and happy life,” he says, and something Louis didn’t realize that had been clenching inside him for seven hundred years breaks loose. “He was a full swāmi, so he didn’t take a wife, but he was beloved here. And,” he whispers, like he’s sharing a secret, “there’s a legend that he could speak directly to Heaven.”

Louis leans in, and whispers back, “He could.”

Yusuf may be an adult, but his eyes light up as though Louis just let him know Superman was real. Of course, for an orphan boy named after a man who lived long before him, this might be an acceptable equivalent. He claps his hands together once, his smile breathtaking. “That is… that is good to hear,” he says, almost breathlessly. For a moment he stands and looks at the fresco, his hands still clasped, then he shakes himself and turns back to Louis and Harry. “We have his books here, journals and records of his dreams and visions. In one of them, he said that if his saviors ever come back to visit, to give them back their magic.”

He gestures to the drachma necklace in its glass case. Louis fully expects Harry to take it: he’s sentimental as all hell, and he loves collecting little bits of their lives together. Surely he’d want his first glamour necklace, even if it _wasn’t_ an ancient piece of his home in Greece, still surviving into the future.

But Harry grins, and shakes his head. “No, you keep it. I can spare a bit of magic. In fact,” he steps over and carefully removes the necklace from its case, holding it delicately. The leather that had made up the necklace is singed and crumbling, but the silver of the coin still shines. The glamour in it is weak, the product of Harry’s earliest attempts at using his powers like child’s play compared to his abilities now. He lays his finger against the carved face of the coin and drains the bit of magic, then his eyes flash black as he funnels in enormous amounts of energy, his veins burning under his skin with the effort.

When Louis recognizes the iron-tinge of the defensive spell Harry is channeling into the coin — one strong enough to keep this little building standing through the apocalypse — he lays his hand on Harry’s and adds his energy to it as well, layering in some health magic and a protection over the well, guaranteeing no illnesses and fresh water for as long as there are people here to use it.

“There,” Harry says, satisfied and a little tired, laying the necklace back in its case. “That should hold you for a while.”

“If you ever need a place to stay,” Yusuf says gratefully, holding his younger counterpart against his hip as Harry and Louis walk away, “you will always be welcome here.”

Louis looks over his shoulder for a long time as they walk away, his chest achey under his standard-issue vest. Yusuf and the boy wave, and the building stands lopsided but overwhelmingly protected behind them, and Louis wonders if this is what it’s like to have a non-immortal family, someone waiting at home and hoping, even if they can’t see you, that you’re safe.

 

* * *

 

_London, England | April 2016_

They’ve handed the spellbook they took from Caroline’s flat over to Steve to take a look at, with Zayn’s help. He’s better at stuff like this than the rest of them, has patience even beyond Liam’s and his grasp of languages better than Niall’s.

“He’s like Zayn, without the smolder but with better hair,” Niall says as they drop the book off at Zayn’s flat. Zayn lets Niall know his displeasure at that comment when he snaps out a rapid spell, whacking him across the back of the head.

“Settle down, children,” Harry chides, ushering Niall out the door. “Z, you’ll call with updates?”

Zayn was sticking his tongue out at Niall but he straightens up at the reminder of the situation, shoulders going firm. “Hopefully soon,” he promises.

After that, all they can do is wait.

There aren’t any more attacks, at least. Maybe whoever was causing all the problems only had two copies of the spellbook, and they’d lent their last one to Caroline, or maybe they’re biding their time, lying in wait. Either way, it’s suspiciously quiet in the immortal world as April draws toward May.

In the week following the spellbook recovery mission, Liam takes to pacing while staring at his phone. Zayn texts updates at the end of every day, usually something simple like _nothing_ or _no news,_ but Liam watches the screen of his phone as though if he wills it hard enough, Zayn’s name will pop up on the screen. As the week continues on, he starts to mutter.

“Showed our hand,” he mumbles, taking a pass around the room and exuding an air of wild panic. “We got hasty and showed our hand, now they know.”

“Know what, Liam?” Louis calls lazily. Harry’s got his head in Louis’ lap, flipping idly through a book about French Guyana. Niall, perched by the window and flipping distractedly through his homemade not-tarot cards (reading what he can of the future for Louis, for Harry, for Liam, for Zayn, then starting all over again, his brow pinched), snorts.

“They _know,”_ is all Liam answers, like he’s trying to win an award for being the most ominous person in a room that contains an actual demon.

But, at the same time, Louis knows what he means. They _did_ show their hand, in a way; now whoever is pulling the strings knows that the five of them are invested and willing to go to certain lengths to try to stop things from happening. If nothing else, whoever gave the spellbook to Caroline knows they have it, and it’s an obvious assumption that they’ll dig into it until answers appear.

So Liam paces, and Niall broods, and Harry compartmentalizes, and Louis waits.

And then Zayn calls.

Liam reacts so quickly his neck makes an audible crack, but he doesn’t even wince. He doesn’t stop to answer Zayn’s call, either, just snags Niall’s arm and Harry’s ankle and squeezes his eyes shut, and then they’re deposited into Zayn’s living room with a concussive _thud._

“Well,” Zayn says, lowering his phone from his ear and ending the call to Liam. “Nice to see you.”

“Well? What’d you find?” Liam asks.

Zayn and Steve exchange a look, and Louis’ stomach sinks without even hearing what they have to say.

“It’s bad news, isn’t it?” he asks anyway, because he likes to go into danger with his eyes wide open.

“Not necessarily,” Zayn says, but there’s a split second of hesitation that says Louis’ stomach was right.

They crowd around Zayn’s dining table, where the spellbook sits innocuously among piles of printouts, other books, and jars of herbs and paints. There are pages and pages of scrawled notes, Zayn and Steve’s handwriting overlapping like an argument, things crossed out and scribbled over. Steve grabs the sheaf of paper and taps it against the tabletop, straightening the edges of the pages so they line up. He’s nervous.

No, not nervous. Worried.

“Just tell us,” Harry pleads quietly.

“Okay,” Zayn exhales, laying his palms on the table and hanging his head for a second, then looking back up to meet their eyes. “Well. We weren’t lying — in the long run, this information can be good for us. Everything we learn about the people trying to hurt our friends and family is helpful.”

“So what do we know?” Niall asks, voice hard-edged.

“Let’s start with this,” Steve says, closing the spellbook and laying it so the cover shows. “Zayn told me you thought it was mistranslated Latin, and I was going to agree with you and leave it alone, but I did some research just in case.” He digs through a stack of printed pictures, digs one out. It’s a photo of a painting, a somber-faced group of people in a half-circle around a blue fire, clad in black robes. “This is an underground cult, and I don’t know if they even have a name. If there is one, they don’t stamp it everywhere in an attempt to strike fear into everyone’s hearts like some other groups do. But look here.” He points to a specific part of the photo, and Liam breathes in sharply through his nose.

“The book.”

“The same book, I believe,” Steve nods. “We only happened across this painting because I remembered something about the blue fire, and how strange that was. And blue fire was on your list of clues.” He nods to the crumpled page of notes Harry had scribed at Bressie’s, every bit of information they could rack their minds for. It’s heavily marked up with notes now, but Louis can read Harry’s careful capital letters from where he stands, _BLUE FIRE_ and next to that, in Steve’s cramped cursive, it says _copper._

“Copper turns fire blue?” Louis guesses.

“It depends on the kind of copper you use. Copper chloride turns flames blue, copper sulphide turns it green. Pure copper is hard to burn, but it’s a mix of blue and green when it does.”

“I failed chemistry in high school,” Liam says, “so you’ll have to forgive me, but what the hell does this have to do with anything?”

“There are a lot of myths about copper,” Steve explains, “origin stories in Native American tribes, in the Anatolia region, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece. All these different cultures have stories about how copper was handed to humans by gods, or by nature spirits, because humans need copper to survive, which led to stories about how copper was sacred, just like fire or water.”

“In the early medieval period, this group showed up,” Zayn takes over, gesturing to the photo again. “They’ve been around in some form or another since the sixth century, always marked by a blue flame. From what we can tell,” he crosses his arms, looking balefully down at the photo, the stoic faces, “they burned copper to show that they didn’t care for gifts from gods, or to show they didn’t need the help of the gods anymore.”

Louis clears his throat. “So if they don’t respect or need any gods…”

“Then they also probably don’t have much use for angels, or demons, or anything else different or more powerful than a human,” Zayn finishes for him, nodding. “This is just a theory, of course, but we think what they’re trying to do is quite literally exterminate anything non-human, using this ancient spellbook.”

“Which leads back to this,” Steve taps the book’s cover. “What we thought was mistranslated Latin might actually be the motto for this cult, coven, whatever you want to call it. They took an old Latin phrase — through fire, nature is reborn — and twisted it.”

The light from a nearby lamp catches on the faded red of the Latin script, _Igni natura vincantur integral._ “Through fire, nature is conquered whole,” Harry murmurs.

“I think it’s supposed to look amateurish,” Steve explains. “It’s almost over the top, the giant black book with the title written in blood, Latin that sounds fancy but is grammatically and historically incorrect. But that’s just pig’s blood on the front, not human, and the paper isn’t as old as it seems. If I had to guess, I’d bet that the original spellbook was falling apart so they transcribed it and added a few bits of horror flair to make it look like a film prop. Then, when someone comes along who can recognize real spell work and ancient tomes,” he inclines his head towards Harry and Louis, “they assume it’s just amateurs playing at being real conjurers.”

“That’s… that’s almost word for word what I said when I saw it,” Louis says, stunned.

“So they’re pretending to be worse at magic than they really are?” Niall asks.

“Worse at magic, less powerful, less knowledgable,” Zayn agrees. “The written Latin is wonky but if a person was trained how to read it so that it still came out correctly, these spells are actually highly powerful. We tried a few, and they’re intense.”

“ _But_ they don’t actually seem to deplete much energy,” Steve adds. “The spells are so powerful that it doesn’t take a powerful mage to use them for their intended purposes.”

“That’s how they were able to summon both Louis and me at the same time,” Harry says, wide-eyed.

“And how they got you in the first place,” Louis says, the memory smacking into him. “Remember, they somehow copied my voice and tricked you into thinking I was in danger?”

“Let me get this straight,” Liam says. “They’re powerful, intelligent, and possibly want to rid the world of immortals.”

“Yeah,” Zayn says, almost apologetically. “And that’s not all.”

“Holy Mother, there’s _more?”_ Niall groans.

“All of what you just said is important,” Steve says, flipping the book open again. The page he opens to is almost blank, what looks like a mere handful of words written directly in the middle of the page. “Helpful in the long run, probably, but not an immediate risk, since they’ve been quiet lately. We weren’t even going to call you, until we saw this.”

The four of them lean in together to read the two short sentences on the otherwise empty page. Louis feels Niall’s and Harry’s heartbeats kick up in surprise, and he knows his would be doing the same if it was possible. He reads the words again, as though this time he’ll understand.

He doesn’t.

 _When the Book is taken, so it Begins. When the green fire burns, so it Ends._  

“When the book is taken, it begins,” Harry reads aloud. “What begins? Their plan?”

“I don’t know,” Zayn says, rubbing at his temple. “I don’t know. But there’s no way for them to predict the future, not unless-“

“Not unless a prophet told them,” Louis finishes. He looks up at Zayn, catching his eye. “Prophets have gone rogue before.”

“Not like this!” Zayn says, movements sharp with worry. “Not condemning immortal people to death!”

“There’s no other way they could know someone would take the book?”

“I don’t _know,”_ Zayn repeats. He looks lost, frustrated, used to holding the answers but just this once he’s been kept blind. “There are obviously multiple copies, because Louis and Harry destroyed one. Maybe this is just some fake divinatory bullshit that they added, just so that when someone eventually took one of their books, they could call it prophecy fulfillment if they succeeded in doing what they want to do.”

“Maybe,” Steve agrees quietly. “But…”

“But if not, we just set a prophecy in motion,” Louis finishes for him. His mouth feels numb. Next to him, Harry shivers.

They stand there for a long while, wondering what the hell they’ve just done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an actual quote from my beautiful beta about the thought of niall teaching a werewolf how to werewolf:  
>  _i don't know what's funnier, imagining the werewolf as remus or scott mccall_  
>  scott: derek said the bite was a gift.  
> niall: some fuckin' gift mate, hope you kept the receipt 
> 
> _remus: my boyfriend has long dark hair and a flair for the dramatics_  
>  niall: is his name harry?  
> remus: what? no, that's his godson


	3. THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the final one! notes are at the end. thank you again for reading, i appreciate it so much. 
> 
> **warnings for this one** : brief (very very brief) description of torture, description of injury (burns), minor character death, villains Doing That Thing Where They Explain Their Brilliant Plan, loss of control/a character harming another while under someone else's control, descriptions of war

PART THREE — THE END

 _Imagine a room,_  
_a sudden glow. Here is my hand, my heart,_  
_my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated_  
_cities at the center of me, and here is the center_  
_of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we_  
_can drink from, but I can’t go through with it.  
_ I just don’t want to die anymore.

  
  


_London, England | April 2016_

The week after the terrifying revelations about the spellbook, an angel in Liam’s regiment is found dead.

It’s not entirely impossible; angel death is difficult to cause, but not out of the realm of possibility. A well-stocked immortal or a highly motivated human could do it, especially if the angel wasn’t conscious to fight back. But this case is different; the angel’s chest is burned just like Lugh’s had been, the stamp of the cult written out clearly, tauntingly.

Louis wonders if this is what it feels like to stand on a tectonic plate as it moves.  

There’s no family dinner at Niall’s. Everyone texts to check in, sending quick videos or pictures to prove they’re okay. Zayn sends a picture of himself with Liam, promising he’ll take care of him. Niall spends the night at Louis and Harry’s, and he wastes a good portion of the evening trying to convince himself that calling off dinner was a good idea, then arguing the opposite side against his own judgement.

“It was a good idea,” Harry tells him, squeezing him by the wrist.

“We’re stronger together,” Niall argues weakly.

“We’re also easier targets when we’re all in one place,” Louis reminds him. Niall doesn’t say anything else, but he curls closer to them for the rest of the night.

When Niall leaves the next morning, Harry turns to Louis with something heavy written all over his face.

“This isn’t a coincidence.”

“Maybe not,” Louis hedges, because the thought that these attacks have been targeted, and targeted at _them,_ specifically, makes his stomach turn. He shoves away the little thought in his head that says that maybe they’re acting as a self-fulfilling prophecy. They noticed the attacks, they grabbed the spellbook, and now the attacks have a sharper focus.

Maybe _this_ is their fault too.

No. _No._ He shakes his head. “The immortal crowd is pretty small, Haz. There aren’t too many degrees of separation between us all. It could just be coincidence.”

“It’s not,” Harry says. “Lou, it’s not. It’s us, I can feel it tightening like a noose. It’s us.”

Louis doesn’t say anything, because he’s not entirely sure Harry is wrong. Instead he pulls him close, and they cling together until the sun is high in the sky, shoving away their worries and pouring their fear into each other, where it flickers and fades for just a little while so they can rest.

 

* * *

 

_Logroño, Spain | 1559_

Someone someday will say that being a soldier isn't about learning how to fight. It's about learning how to live in the moments _between_ fights, how to keep from going mad when there isn’t a rush of battle to keep you occupied.

Louis has been in a lot of wars. He's not much in it for the glory and heroism, the joy of the kill or whatever masculine nonsense he's supposed to get out of the moment he sinks his sword into someone else — no, that was more Uriel's thing, not Louis’. But sometimes Louis couldn't find himself anywhere else, drawn to battle by righteousness, by anger, by a need to keep someone safe (sometimes Harry, sometimes innocent men and women whose souls glowed bright, who needed Louis’ eye on them so that they could live through a war and make the world a better place on the other side. Sometimes protecting those souls was a job assignment, sometimes it was a personal choice to get involved). And so he knew that whoever it was that said being a soldier was learning to survive the waiting was absolutely correct, because he'd lived it, over and over again.

Being immortal, he thinks, is the exact same experience.

Most of Louis’ time is spent gently surviving. He’s a soldier — he’s always been a soldier, a member of the heavenly host, created in peace but made for war — and his war is just a little longer than those waged by humans, stretching over the millennia. He’s learned to find serenity in the calm moments, to not always be on edge. It helps that he has Harry, a conduit to pour his jitters into when they get to be too much, who puts his energy to good use when all he can think about is destruction.

It’s why they travel, it’s why they spend a few months at Niall’s every so often, it’s why they drop in on Lottie and Fizzy and the twins to see what they’re up to, if they need help. It’s why they spend some days in lazy bliss, not doing much else besides relaxing against each other, whiling away a day. It’s how they stay sane, to keep from jumping every time one of them gets a summons.

That’s what they’re doing when they’re captured, distracted by sun and an empty beach, tucked away together from sailors’ prying eyes. One moment Harry is there, hovering over Louis with a wide, wild grin on his face, and then he’s gone, yelping in surprise.

Louis rolls to his feet but it’s too late — three men in heavy robes have Harry bound in rope, his eyes flashing the dangerous black that means the ropes are blessed and his strength is being sapped, his glamour muted. He can’t get free.

“Don’t run, or we kill him,” says another man in a robe. His Spanish is stilted, like he just learned it; the Inquisition has just hit its stride, though, and it wouldn’t surprise Louis one bit if the Spanish Church had outsourced a few foreigners to keep up with the high demand. When Louis doesn’t immediately respond, one of Harry’s captors draws a knife, silver-bright and radiating the kind of oily feeling that comes with objects that drip with violent spells, and holds it to his throat.

Louis feels a roll of rage, but he tamps it down and holds up his hands in surrender. He’s not worried about humans — their little tricks and spells can only do so much, and none of them really know the power or magic it takes to bring down an angel like Louis or a demon like Harry — but they’re still unpredictable, and he won’t let Harry get hurt because they do something stupid.

They end up in a dungeon, because of course they do, and for a little while Louis thinks maybe the blessed ropes and spelled knife were a coincidence. Maybe someone did see them on a not-as-empty-as-believed beach, alerted the authorities; sodomy is a crime, and while Harry and Louis hadn’t quite gotten to that part of the afternoon, it was definitely on the agenda. Maybe there’ll be some thumb screws or a bit of flogging to get them to confess, and they’ll go free before the cuts have even healed.

It takes until he smells the burning holy oil that Louis realizes these men know more than most.

“Shit,” Harry curses when he smells it too. “Lou.”

“I know.” The men are watching them, and it doesn’t matter that they’re having this conversation in Gaelic — not on purpose, but when they think safety they think of home and home means family and family means Niall — because panic sounds the same in any language.

They have to get out of here, though. Blessed ropes bind them each to a rack, their muscles stretched tight. A whole tray of magic instruments is tucked away in the corner, Louis can feel the slimy aura of dangerous spells and poisons all the way over here. There are piles of extra blessed rope on the table, too, and Louis hates that almost more than the magic; holy items only hurt angels because holy people are supposed to wield them. The thought was that only an angel doing dangerous deeds would have a holy man or woman working against them, but, of course, bad people can steal and use holy ropes just as easily as they can use regular ones.

And then there’s the holy oil, burning bright, sick, sweet, pungent and sharp in the hot, dark room.

They have to leave. They need to get as far away from this room as possible.

“How did you find us?” Louis asks, only slightly a diversionary tactic. The nearest man smiles, all teeth.

“We have our ways,” he says loftily, which means he either doesn’t actually know how a bunch of humans tracked down two immortals, or he was the one to do it and he enjoys his secrecy. Louis is leaning towards the latter.

The man moves away from Louis, robes swishing against the dirt floor, and faces Harry now. Their racks are set up so they can, presumably, watch each other be tortured, spaced just far enough that they can’t reach each other but close enough for Louis to hear the sharp sound of a fingernail scraping across Harry’s stomach.

“What an interesting scar,” he says, tracing the dark swath of skin across Harry’s abdomen, the old burn left over from his human days. “I am surprised that your transformation into demonism did not take care of that.”

Harry tilts his chin, bares his teeth. “I asked for it to stay.” Louis didn’t know that, but it doesn’t surprise him. “It adds character.”

The man laughs. “That it does.” He turns to Louis again, his eyes considering. “Maybe we should add some character to your friend, too.”

That’s all the warning Louis gets before two men appear on either side of him, hoisting the holy oil over his head and letting it drip onto his body—

— white hot heat hits his stomach, he _screams_ —

— bubbles, pops of chemical terror, burns up to his chest, they must’ve tilted the rack so the oil would echo the path of Harry’s scar—

— panic, _panic,_ an animal need to _run_ and _hide_ and _survive_ —

— he howls, he spits, he screams curses in Enochian, in Latin, in Swahili, in Urdu in Gaelic in Greek _I WILL RAIN VENGEANCE ON YOUR FAMILIES BECAUSE YOU WILL ALREADY BE DEAD—_

— head tossing, pulling uselessly at the binds, he’d chew through his own _bones_ if that would mean he wasn’t hooked down and _burning_ _alive_ anymore—  

— he hears screaming, he thinks it’s his, he thinks it’s Harry, he thinks nothing as his eyes roll back—

“That’s enough.”

The rack is tilted sideways and the oil runs off Louis’ side, pooling under the wooden frame. Louis’ chest is heaving, shaking; he can’t feel anything except how much he can’t feel the skin across his stomach anymore. It’s burned numb, so hot it’s cool.

He didn’t know angels could _hurt_ like this. He’s been run through with swords, he’s had sigils burn themselves onto his arms after great victories, he barely survived Harry’s death but even that ache wasn’t so horrifyingly agonizing. The man in the black robe stands over Louis and prods at the burn twisting its way up Louis’ torso, a mirror image of Harry’s. Louis hisses, shrinking back, and thinks of all the things he’s going to do to this person when he gets free.

“How interesting,” the man murmurs, like Louis is a scientific experiment. Louis is going to start by removing all his fingers, that seems fun. “The scar forms more quickly than the skin can heal.” He looks up at Louis, smirking. “You’re not as invincible as you seem.”

No, Louis is going to start by dunking his head into the vat of burning holy oil. They can discuss recovery times after that.

“Now,” the man says, his robe still swishing, and he turns to Harry. “Your turn.”

_No._

Harry might be dipped in evil, black to his beautiful soul, but he’s still better than anyone Louis has ever met. He’s _good,_ good in ways Louis doesn’t understand, because he has had every opportunity in the world to be selfish, to be cruel. It wouldn’t even be surprising for him to have died a good man and to be risen as the opposite — but that’s not what happened. Harry, even as a demon, has the sort of kindness that is unmistakable and genuine; he’d lay down his life for a perfect stranger, without ever hesitating.

Louis’ soul is white, but he’s not sure he can say he’s built the same. He’s full of anger — not just now, newly burned and strapped to a torture rack — but always, always ready to lash out, to strike. He’d sacrifice himself in a heartbeat to save Harry, to save Niall, his sisters, but that’s born of selfish reasons, not altruistic ones. He wouldn’t want to live in a world without them, so he’ll do anything to keep that from happening. He knows himself well enough that if these puny, _insignificant_ humans lay a single _hand_ on Harry, he’ll rip their spines from their bodies without a flinch.

He’s a soldier, and he’s suddenly been flung headfirst into a battle.

The men drag the rolling pot of holy oil over to Harry, lift it as though they’re going to splash it over his shoulders. Harry’s eyes are wide with terror, the holy ropes negating his glamour so he’s grey-skinned and fire-veined, sweating and twisting uselessly to get away from the oil threatening to fall from the pot.

Louis feels something irreparable inside himself crack.

A second later, the only thing cracking is the wood of the rack they tied him to.

He _bows,_ bending himself backwards until the wood is groaning, his wrists and ankles angled toward the floor. The crack comes from the center of the middle beam, right under Louis’ lower back; he feels a giant piece of wood splinter off and lodge itself into his body, would probably have severed his spine if he had one of those. But he doesn’t, so he quickly bends the opposite way, curling his chest and knees inward, punching his wrists up toward the ceiling, kicking his ankles up too.

The rack disintegrates. Louis is left lying on the floor where it used to be, his ankles and wrists still strapped to bits of wood that used to make up the four corners of the frame. He brings his right wrist up to his mouth and bites through the rope, ignoring the burns that the rope leaves across his lips, then does the same for the other side. In seconds, he’s free from the heavy sensation that had kept him from using any of his power and it courses through him, holy blood itching to be used to fight.

He spreads his wings. The torturer’s assistants scream. He pounces.

One man is thrown into the wall and slides down into a huddled slump of black cloth. Another trips and Louis snaps his fingers, making one of the knives on the table reappear pointy end up right where the man’s throat lands. Louis throws a bookshelf in front of the door so no one else can escape and rips off Harry’s bindings so that he can stand, too, power crackling around him as his eyes go, impossibly, even blacker.

The assistants are easy to deal with. They run and scream but it’s no more than a group of chickens to two foxes, amused and smirking as the silly humans back themselves into a corner and turn into easy prey. The torturer they leave for last; he’s ashen and wan, pale in the fire still being thrown from the pot of holy oil. There’s power pulsing in his palms, like he’s gearing up to cast a spell, so Louis snaps his fingers and the blessed rope circles him, tying itself tight.  

“What do you think, Harry?” Louis asks. His voice is rumbling, shaking the walls of the room.

Harry’s voice is little more than a controlled hiss, his sibilants sliding. His tongue is forked. “We could leave him. Let oxygen deprivation take itsss time with him.”

“Hmm,” Louis considers, then twists a weird way and feels the racing ache of the brand new burn across his stomach. He glances toward the torturer and smiles, wide and dark.

The only thing behind them when they leave is the still-burning pot of holy oil, inching its way across the room towards the tied-up torturer, and another fire flickering in a glass jar nearby, so small and inconsequential that Louis almost hadn’t noticed it.

The fire in the jar is blue.

 

* * *

 

_London, England | May 2016_

Louis is almost surprised it takes as long as it does for him to be summoned Upstairs. This mess has gone on too long, and he’s right at the middle of it — _it’s us,_ Harry’s voice keeps whispering in the back of his head, _it’s us_ — so he’s sure he’s going to have to come up with some sort of explanation to keep the gates of Heaven from opening and spilling every bloodthirsty angel onto the earth.

Some _amazing_ explanation, too, because according to Liam the regiments are chomping at the bit to be sent out, and they won’t discriminate between the actual (still mostly unknown)(possibly secret cult)(secret cult that can do _magic_ and has it seriously out for Louis and his family, holy _shit_ ) targets and innocent people (or demons)(or two hundred year old prophets)(or Irish demigods) who stand in their way.

The official summons lies there, still smoking somewhat ominously. When Harry dragged Louis to the cinema — the midnight showing, of course — to see the second Harry Potter film, the both of them laughed so hard at the resemblance of Howlers to Heaven’s _actual preferred form of communication_ that several nearby children shushed them. Heaven’s summons are white envelopes, not red, and they appear out of thin air with the trill of harp strings, and they’re a bit more ostentatiously demanding than Howlers, but truly the resemblance is uncanny.

Louis picks it up and reads the words — _Requesting your presence at your earliest convenience, regarding the matter of two (2) identified murders related to possible cult activity_ — and wrinkles his nose.

“Don’t wanna go,” he grumbles, because the _at your earliest convenience_ part is a big giant joke, and if Louis doesn’t show up at the pearly gates within the next day, there’ll be Heaven to pay.

Harry tuts, smoothing Louis’ hair back. “You have to go,” he insists gently, pulling Louis close and pressing a slow kiss to his mouth, then his forehead. “Be careful. And don’t let them keep you too long.”

Louis snorts, because bureaucracy is bureaucracy, whether it’s in Heaven or Hell or the world in-between. But, still, he promises, “I won’t.”

Harry nods and steps back, shielding his eyes. Louis closes his own, balls his fists up, thinks upward thoughts —

— and opens his eyes again when his feet hit solid ground. He puts a hand to his chest for a moment, breathing hard; the longer he’s been away, the harder it is for him to pass through the barrier. Too much longer and he might not’ve made it through without help.

Heaven’s lobby isn’t unlike that at a posh hotel, all sleek surfaces and calming colors. There’s a lot of sky blue and gold, but Louis thinks that’s just because someone up here likes playing with stereotypes. An angel with a sleek dark braid over her shoulder, threaded with gold to match her perfectly sharp eyeliner, smiles as he approaches the desk.

“Good afternoon, Leilel,” she says warmly. “I’m Leigh-Anne. The Seven are finishing up with another meeting, but they’ll be with you in just a moment. Can I get you anything?”

Leigh-Anne seems nice enough, even despite the circumstances that brought Louis here, but he’s just not really in the mood to make nice. All he wants is to bluff his way through this appointment and go home. Harry promised he’d make risotto for dinner. “I’m fine, Leigh-Anne. Thanks.”

Louis spends the next few minutes watching angels pass by, chatting quietly or paging through pale blue folders. Most of them head towards the bank of elevators at the northernmost end of the lobby, but some of them lounge around on the comfy-looking gold couches and chairs near the elevators, sipping from shining crystal glasses and sampling food that appears periodically on the scattered tables. After a while, though, that gets boring, so he casts his attention around for something else to focus on instead, trying to pick out any differences since the last time he was up here (besides the customized iPhone 12 Leigh-Anne is tapping away on, of course).

There’s a single elevator at the south end of the lobby, and this one is the largest and most ornate. Like the penthouse at a pricey hotel down on Earth, it requires a special key to get in and out of; a few minutes after Louis arrives, the door to that elevator opens and a beautiful woman clad in a lavender sundress exits, inclining her head at Leigh-Anne as she passes.

“Have a wonderful evening, Miss Persephone,” Leigh-Anne says. “Leilel, they’re ready for you.”

Louis stops averting his eyes from Persephone — she really does scare the absolute bejesus out of him — long enough to follow Leigh-Anne to the door of the ridiculously ornate elevator — honestly, did their interior designer used to live in Marie Antoinette’s France? There _is_ such a thing as too much grandeur — and lays her palm to the center of the door. A blue light pulses outward, and the door slides open with a soft, cheerful _ding!_  

Louis steps in and rolls his eyes; they’ve apparently got Michaelangelo on retainer, and he’s painting portraits for elevator interiors now. This one is nice enough, Louis supposes, though Uriel is _not_ that pretty without a decent hour of spellwork beforehand and a decent amount of hoping for the best.

The door opens again and Louis steps into a mostly-empty room. The Seven are chatting quietly amongst themselves, spaced around the room: Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Jophiel, Camael, Zadkiel, and Michael. The holiest of holy.

“Well, well, well,” says Gabriel, wide smile spreading across his classically pretty face. Louis hates his stupid square jaw. “Look what the demon dragged in.”

The holiest of holy, and more annoying than _any_ other group of beings anywhere in the cosmos.

“Gabe,” chides Uriel.

“Just welcoming little brother back to the nest!” Gabriel shrugs, throwing himself back onto a sky blue cushion. “Long time no see, Leilel.”

“Louis,” he corrects automatically, then rolls his eyes at himself because he shouldn’t have even bothered. If anyone’s stuck in antiquity, it’s the Seven.

“Take a seat, baby bro!” Gabriel beams. He's like a fucking golden retriever, all wide smiles and preening at any bit of attention. Louis has known this since quite literally the beginning of time, but he still has to tamp down the urge to cold-shoulder him just to see his metaphorical tail drop between his legs.

But he does what they asked and takes a seat, dropping into the pure white overstuffed armchair in the middle of the room. He's been here before — for disciplinary reasons and because he had news or plans to share, sometimes both in the same meeting — but this is the first time he's felt like he was being eased into a conversation.

“Leilel,” says Camael gently, but that's the wrong tactic because Louis immediately feels his shoulders draw up. Cam frowns, but she continues anyway. “We've noticed an issue that seems to be circling you in particular, and we’re concerned.”

“It's not _just_ me,” Louis tells them, refusing to acknowledge the petulance that sneaks into his voice. He hates that the Seven bring out this side of him: they're like octuplets arguing about who's oldest — and it doesn't really matter, but at the same time it _does_. Michael was created first, then Uriel. They're highest in command because of that, general and lieutenant. Age is relative among angels (because time was impossible to measure before there was a sun or moon or revolving planet to mark its passage), but they're all born (or reborn, in angels like Liam’s case) knowing their ranks and places within the sprawling hierarchy.

It doesn't matter that Louis was created not long after the Seven — minutes, days, decades, he has no idea, only that it felt like an eternity between the first blink of his eyes and when Lottie was given to him, his second in command, his _sister_ — because they will always outrank him. They are Firstborn, he is Fourthborn. Even if he scores cheap points, he’ll never win.

_Still._

“That's actually worse, that whoever is doing this would target your friends too,” Raphael says pointedly. He's always been the calm one; Gabe’s the overwhelming enthusiasm, Michael’s the quiet power, Cam’s the mediator, but Raphael is the one who could get a tree to confess to being an ocean. He's perhaps the scariest of them all.

“We want to help, bro,” Gabe says earnestly. Louis scrubs his hand over his face, suddenly very, very tired. Constant vigilance takes it out of him, apparently.

“I appreciate that,” he says, somewhat heartfelt. Zadkiel grins to herself, and when Louis glares daggers at her the grin only grows. “But I'm handling it.”

“It's been escalating for months,” Cam points out.

“And I've had Beelzebub on my case for _ages_ about sorting this. They don’t even like this situation Downstairs, and they _love_ chaos,” Gabe complains. “Do you have names for us, anything?”

“A spellbook,” Louis admits. “We've figured out it belonged to a cult who- well.”

“Leilel,” Raphael pushes.

Louis sighs. “A cult who really doesn't like immortals. Like, at all.”

Zadkiel isn't grinning anymore. “And?”

“And… who possibly want to murder us all?”

Michael rubs a space between his eyes as though somehow Louis has transcended angelic biology and given him a headache. “Louis…” There’s a twinge of something — gratefulness? — at Michael using the right name, and he knows he’s being humored but he doesn’t really care.

“Listen, I know. I get how it sounds,” Louis says, shoulders drooping. “But you’re right. They’re targeting me, and who I love. I’m not going to hand this up to be dealt with when it’s personal.”

Jophiel, who has been quiet up until now — and that’s the usual sequence of events, so Louis isn’t surprised when he finally leans forward to give his input last — clears his throat. Even Michael turns to him, watching him watch Louis, his dark eyes careful. “You would be safer if you stayed here,” he says.

“No,” Louis says automatically. “I mean, yes, I would, but Joph. I can’t just _stay.”_

“Why not?” Jophiel prods. He’s got a distracting new sigil, a wide gold band around his forehead, almost glowing against his dark skin. “You can help your friends from up here, as well, and then you are not in the line of fire.”

“What about Liam? He’s one of us too, are you offering this choice to him?” Louis demands. “Ed and Jade, Jesy, any of them?”

“The patron angels are removed from the situation,” Uriel says, waving his hand. “The three of them aren’t close enough that we worry for them. As for the guardian…”

Zadkiel is the one to say it, shrugging carelessly and tossing a lock of hair over her shoulder. “Collateral.”

Louis’ fist clenches, and he closes his eyes, reining in the fury that sweeps through him. “I won’t leave them on their own.” He opens his eyes, looks only at Michael. “They’re my friends. My _family.”_

“We’re your family,” Raphael corrects.

“Yeah, well,” Louis says. “So are they. Congrats,” he throws his hands up in mock celebration, “you’ve got yourselves some in-laws.”

Gabe laughs quietly, looking fond, but the rest look unamused. “You’re talking about the little demon you like so much,” Cam says.

“I’m _talking_ about the man I love,” Louis says.

“We’ve let that go on for far too long,” Zadkiel says. “We shouldn’t have allowed it in the first place, but you got attached to him as a human, and we didn’t see the harm.”

“He’s _using_ you,” Raphael says.

“That’s a neat trick, seeing as how he was a seventeen year old _human_ when I met him.”

“You think it’s a coincidence?” Zadkiel asks incredulously. “He’s a demon at the center of a web of chaos, lies, and death. The only thing that’s surprising about that is that you’re still defending him.”

“He has no part of this!” Louis protests. “He’s hurting just as badly as I am. This is his family just as much as it’s mine.”

Raphael snorts, leaning back and crossing his arms. “Or he’s a good liar.”

“Lou,” Gabe says. It shocks Louis into uncurling his hands out of their tight fists. “C’mon, bro. We just want you to stay alive.”

He’s the one Louis answers this time. “You can’t keep me here.” He means to say it harshly, a rough reminder of the rules that say he, ultimately, isn’t bound to his fate. Instead it comes out gentle, like he’s trying to keep from hurting his brother’s feelings. He hasn’t had that urge in millennia. “Free will, remember? And I choose to stay with them. With _him.”_

Gabe is uncharacteristically solemn, but he nods. Around the room, Cam looks contemplative, and Zadkiel and Raphael look like someone promised them at _least_ one execution, then changed their mind. Uriel is stoic as always, Joph nods as well.

“Go,” Michael says, and Louis feels the tension leave his chest. “Be safe.”

As Louis stands and steps into the elevator to take him back to Leigh-Anne’s impeccable lobby, he hears Raphael call, “Don’t let yourself get hurt because of some demon who would sell you out in a second.”

Louis doesn’t bother replying. They wouldn’t believe him anyway.

 

* * *

 

_Dublin, Ireland | December 31, 1999_

“This is an incredibly bad idea,” Zayn reminds them as the tinny voices from the TV shout _10 - 9!_

“So bad,” Niall agrees, but contrary to Zayn he’s delighted by it. _8 - 7!_

“Wait, this isn’t _actually_ the end of the world, right?” Liam clarifies worriedly. _6!_ He’s still too new to this, he thinks every bulletin about floods or wildfires or suspicious diseases on the evening news could be the kickstart of the apocalypse. _5 - 4!_

“We won’t know when the end of the world’s coming, Li,” Louis explains. _3!_ “But it probably won’t be kicked off with a party.” _2!_

“Cheers, lads!” Harry shouts. _1! HAPPY NEW YEAR!_

They toast their bottles — the four immortals holding four separate bottles of the faerie liquor Bressie sends Niall, Zayn holding a bottle of straight everclear — and they each throw back giant gulps.

“Fuck!” Louis gasps, clenching at his throat. They usually only have a drop or two of this liquor at a time, because it’s too strong otherwise. His larynx feels like it’s collapsing, except it’s not, because he’s not really made up of blood and bone even if he looks like it, he doesn’t actually have a larynx _to_ collapse.

But damn if he can’t remember that at the moment.

Harry crumples onto his back and Louis feels a momentary rush of panic before he realizes it’s just Harry being dramatic, rolling and groaning about what a terrible idea this was. Niall’s alternating between cackling and coughing. Liam, well.

“I hate you,” he chokes, wiping at the involuntary tears streaming from the corners of his eyes. “I hate _all of you_.”

Zayn’s the only one halfway okay — everclear isn’t easy, by any means, but it’s nowhere near the faerie liquor, even for humans — and he’s the one who steers them into sitting where they’ll be safe, away from the fireplace and the electronics and anything except nice, safe cushions and blankets on the floor.

Louis sprawls out and they become a human Celtic knot, all intertwined limbs and one person starting where the next one stops, Louis’ head on Niall’s lap Niall’s legs thrown over Liam’s thighs Liam’s arms around Zayn’s waist until they’re all one big pile of inebriation.

“What’s that human game they play when they’re drunk?” Louis asks. The world is all hazy colors — alcohol is more like a sensory inhibitor to immortals than anything else, playing with their sight, their smell, their hearing — but it’s pleasant, and Harry and Niall are warm against him.

“Truth or dare?” Liam asks.

“Dare!” Harry yells.

“No, we weren’t- okay, Harry chose dare,” Zayn says. “Liam, dare Harry to do something.”

“Uh,” Liam says. “I… didn’t really have anything in mind.”

It’s way harder to play this game when you’re immortal, they find, because they could make Harry run naked out in the snow but he wouldn’t feel it, or he could prank call someone except anyone they would want to call would know exactly who he was, and daring him to kiss the boy he likes would just be license for him and Louis to do what they usually do on New Years Eve.

Liam eventually makes Harry go make him a sandwich, because he’s hungry, but they’re all too drunk to think that’s _not_ funny so they giggle until Harry gets back, a perfectly made sandwich (complete with garnish, the silly creature) on a plate.

It continues from there just as ridiculously, because none of them have ever really gotten the hang of drinking games, and it’s sort of moot when they all got drunk off of one swig of liquor (except Zayn, who quickly caught up with several more shots), but they try anyway.

So there’s —

“Niall.”

“Truth.”

“Celebrity crush.”

“Er… Clíodhna.”

“That’s… the queen of the banshees?”

“Aye, that’s the one.”

“Right.”

“Is it tasteless to make a joke about screamers?”

“Yes, Louis. Yes it is.”

And —

“Liam.”

“Dare!”

“Do a backflip out the window.”

“Oh, shit, he actually — was that _two_ backflips?”

“Showoff.”

And —

“Lou!”

“Give me a dare, darling.”

“Kiss me until Liam gets back from jumping out the window.”

“Ugh, Louis, Harry, _stop_! That doesn’t count!”

“He dared me to, Niall!”

But eventually the alcohol settles and the game fades out into quiet conversation. They’re all still sprawled across Niall’s living room, though in different combinations than they were at first. Harry’s unironically wearing a [Y2K](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.l9qq2ez8edtk) shirt — and they’ve already drunkenly discussed if the danger of Y2K is officially over when it’s January first, or if they have to wait for the next day, just in case — and Zayn’s got on a party hat, the elastic strap digging into his chin. Niall’s humming Auld Lang Syne.

“Heard from my mum today,” Liam says at one point, words lazy. Louis grins to himself, but doesn’t call Liam out on the Britism — he’s still a New York boy through and through, but he’s been relocated to London for twenty years now. He was bound to pick up a few traits eventually.

“Thought you couldn’t contact your family, after…” Niall waves his hand vaguely.

“After I died?” Liam says wryly. “No, we can’t. It would cause too much chaos, and eventually someone would try to blab, might go to the media about miracles or angels or something and cause a whole bunch of problems. No, she-“ he rubs at his mouth, and Louis nudges at his elbow in support. “She prays, and I hear it.”

“How do you hear it?” Zayn asks, twisting to look at Liam. “I thought prayers went Upstairs to-“

“The Thrones, yeah,” Liam says. Louis had talked him through all this ages ago, had introduced him to James as soon as he could. James was able to reassure Liam that his mother’s prayers would always be heard, and that helped keep Liam from bursting through his parents’ front door, reassuring them that he was still — sort of — here. “Yeah, normally they do, except.”

“She prays to Liam,” Louis explains quietly.

He should, as Liam’s superior, put a stop to it. He hasn’t yet.

“How does that work?” Zayn asks. “Can you just- pray to anyone?”

“Technically, yeah,” Niall answers, rubbing at his eyes. “I used to- well. There were some people, a long time ago, and when they prayed I could hear it.”

“Niall had _followers_ ,” Harry sing-songs, grinning. “And they were all pretty ladies.”

“They weren’t _all_ pretty ladies,” Niall huffs.

“Yeah, I think Bressie was in that group too,” Louis stage whispers, and Harry cackles.

“Isn’t praying to an angel, like, against the rules, or something?” Zayn asks.

“It’s, um. Technically it’s worship of false gods, if we’re gonna give it the proper name,” Liam says, sending an apologetic look at Louis.

Louis _really_ should have put a stop to it already. It just makes Liam so _happy,_ hearing his mother’s voice, telling him about her day, what his sisters are up to, his dad.

Louis can put a stop to it later.

“How _is_ your mum, Li?” Harry asks, sleepy eyes slitted.  

“She’s good,” he says, eyes crinkled. “Her hip’s giving her trouble, but she’s okay. Dad’s good. Ruth’s daughter had a baby recently, so they’re great-grandparents now.” He grins down at his lap. “They’re happy.”

“That’s good, Payno,” Niall says sincerely.

“I just worry about them, you know?” he continues. “They’re in their seventies, and Dad’s health isn’t so good.”

“They’ve lived good lives,” Harry says, patting Liam’s knee.

“No, I know, I know.” Liam shrugs. “That was just always my greatest fear, seeing them die. I never worried for myself.” He spreads his arms out, as if to encompass the irony of dying before them. “Turns out it’s super fun, knowing your greatest fear is gonna happen and you can’t do anything to stop it.”

“Mm,” Louis hums noncommittally. His greatest fear has always been losing Harry in a way that he can’t get him back. It’s been that for so long, he can’t remember what he feared before Harry was around.

“Fire,” Niall throws out. “That’s my fear. Fire.” They wait for more, an explanation, maybe, but none appears.

“Yeah,” Zayn agrees mildly. “Mine too. Funny how witch hunters threatening to burn you at the stake will do that to you.”

Harry doesn’t say anything, but his fingers slide up under the hem of Louis’ shirt, his palm cool against the wide, dark burn scar on Louis’ stomach, the complement to his own. Louis knows what he’s thinking; they’ve not had the best experiences with fire, either.

“Well, not to switch away from a completely morbid topic,” Louis says, “but I’m going to do exactly that. Harry learned a new trick today.”

“Did you?” Niall asks eagerly. He hadn’t been able to help Harry much beyond that first time, helping him find his center deep in his chest.

Harry sits up, crosses his legs. He looks at Liam assessingly, tilts his head, and closes his eyes. A moment later, Harry’s limbs have thinned, his curls have flowed down to his waist in thick, luscious waves. His eyes are almond-shaped and lined with a thick swath of black, his lips thick and pouty.

“So,” he says, but it comes out high and girlish. “How do I look?”

“Like my high school girlfriend,” Liam says, eyes wide.

“Oh,” Harry laughs, looking down at himself. He puts his new, thin-fingered hands up and grabs his new chest. “Is that who this is?”

“ _Harry_!” Liam hisses. “Quit grabbing my old girlfriend!”

“I’m not!” Harry grins brightly. “Just grabbing myself, Li.”

“Holy shit, this is priceless,” Niall cackles. “Do Zayn, do Zayn!”

Harry grins. The image of the beautiful girl he had been impersonating slides away and he becomes himself again, and then he closes his eyes. This time, his hair goes raven-wing black, his eyes just as dark. He shrinks, getting smaller, his legs shorter, limbs daintier.

“Amira,” Zayn whispers. He reaches out and touches Harry’s hand, and Harry’s smirking grin falls away to something softer, letting him. “She- she lived on the farm next to my family’s before…”

Before Zayn and his aunt were apprehended for witchcraft. Harry flicks his glance to Louis, then back to Zayn. He opens his arms and Zayn tucks himself there, curling under Harry’s chin even though he’s much bigger than the girl in his arms.

“I can’t believe…” Zayn whispers, pulling back like he can’t stand not to look at Harry’s face. “How’d you do that?”

“I figured out how to see what, um,” Harry almost hesitates, like he doesn’t want to say it. His voice, _Amira’s_ voice, is deep and husky, strong for a small-framed girl, but fitting. “What, or _who,_ people want most. It doesn’t always seem to be constant, you can change it based on who you’re thinking about, or concentrating on.” He pats softly at Zayn’s hair. “You must’ve been thinking of home, so you thought of Amira.”  

“Let me try,” Niall says, shifting in front of Harry. Zayn pulls back, wipes his eyes, and only shudders a little when Harry — as Amira — kisses his forehead.

“Okay,” Harry says, shaking off the body of Amira and back to himself. “Put it at the forefront of your mind, that’s the easiest for me to see and recreate.”

Niall and Harry both close their eyes, Niall concentrating and Harry’s head cocked to the side like he’s listening. Harry changes slowly, this time, blonde curls falling around his face, a thin face and elegant neck, and-

“Niall,” Liam says. “Is that supposed to be _your_ shirt?”

Harry opens his eyes and looks down at himself, seeing large breasts barely hidden under a too-big flannel shirt. He looks up at Niall and raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“What?” Niall grins unrepentantly. “A man likes what he likes.”

But his concentration must slip in that second, because for just a brief flicker, Harry turns from blonde bombshell to Bressie.

“Um,” Zayn says.

“You should do Louis, now!” Liam says, clearly trying to deflect away from the rising color on Niall’s cheeks.

“Oh please,” Niall laughs shakily, but they don’t call him on it. “He’d look exactly the same.”

“No, come on,” Louis grins. “I’m game. Try me. I promise not to think specifically of you.”

“Alright then,” Harry says, turning towards Louis. “Try to go blank. That seems to be the best way to get the most honest result.”

Louis lets out a breath, props his wrists on his knees like he does when Zayn asks him to meditate with him. Clears away all his thoughts, sweeping them away like wind over sand.

Harry closes his eyes. For a second, he tilts his head like he’s listening again; when he finds what he was looking for, he grins to himself. His hair flips back off his forehead in a high wave, and his arms and shoulders get thinner, his jaw softer. When his clothes fade to a single white piece of cloth, pinned at his shoulder, a chiton, when a crown of hemlocks nestles into his hair, Louis realizes who he must’ve found deep in Louis’ subconscious.

“Aw,” Niall coos. “It’s baby Harry.”

“It’s _Greek_ Harry,” Liam corrects, grinning. “Look at that tan, bro!”

Harry drops his head, laughs. “All natural, Li. I did basically live on the beach.” He looks up, meets Louis’ eyes. “You’re a sap.”

Louis leans forward, props his hands on Harry’s knees. “Happy Y2K, darling,” he says, then kisses the Harry that has lived in his mind for two thousand years until Liam starts to complain.

 

* * *

 

_London, England | May 2016_

Harry bursts into the flat, gasping for air, and shrieks, “Why aren’t you _answering your phone_? We have to go, they’ve got Ed!”

Louis, startled awake out of his nap, drops off the sofa in shock. He rolls to look at Harry, rumpled and confused. “They’ve got Ed? _Who_ got Ed?”

“Who do you _think?_ The cult, the ones trying to kill us all!” Harry groans, rushing to Louis, pulling him up. “C’mon, Lou, we have to go, we have to save him!”

The moment he has a hand wrapped around Louis’ wrist, he twists; they reappear outside a plain wooden door. Liam is already there, throwing his shoulder at the wood like he can shove himself through the magic pouring off the wards by sheer force — apparently they’re not going for the surprise approach this time. Harry grabs Liam by the arm and yanks him back.

“You can’t beat magic into submission,” he says, eyes flashing as he surveys the door. “Where’s Zayn?”

Niall and Zayn appear as if called, Niall clutching Zayn’s arm as they materialize. “Same as last time?” Zayn asks.

“Seems to be, if not heavier wards,” Liam says, still breathing heavily, rubbing at his shoulder.

“Okay,” Zayn exhales, dropping to his knees and fumbling a piece of chalk out of his pocket. He draws a quick rune, just like the last time they'd busted into a witchcraft party, and pricks his finger for the blood to kickstart it.

There’s a howling like a sudden heavy wind and the wooden door shatters inward. They all leap for the opening but only Harry and Louis are able to knock their way inside, Niall and Liam and Zayn bouncing backward against an invisible barrier. It’s loud on this side of things; there’s a chanting coming from another room and Harry lets out a _roar,_ pure rage and frustration blacking his eyes and interfering with the glamour pouring off his cross necklace so that, for a second, his Form shows through.

“Why can’t we get through?” Niall yells over the raging wind, which is still blowing shards of the door inward at Louis, rattling the empty hinges. Louis raises his arm to protect his eyes, sees Niall shoving hard at empty air.

“Harry!” Louis calls, but Harry’s already in the next room, and the chanting has been replaced with sounds of fighting. Louis is about to join the fight and leave the other three — two of whom know far more about magic than he does — to finding their own way inside when he remembers.

“Can you throw me your chalk?” he yells to Zayn. When Zayn tosses it, though, it bounces off the barrier as well. Louis spins on his heel to find something on his side of the barrier he can use and spots a knife, stuck brazenly through a stack of yellowed paper on a nearby desk. Louis grabs it and slices through the middle of his left palm, white blood welling up immediately; he smears the fingers of his right hand through the mess and paints a rune on the floor: an outline of a flame, a hand in the middle.

It’s sloppy but it gets the job done; Niall tumbles inside as the barrier vanishes, then Liam falls on top of him. Louis yanks them to their feet and leads the charge further into the flat, finding a room with a door standing ajar and throwing himself inside anger first.

A woman has Harry pinned by the throat against a wall with a single hand, as though he weighs less than a kitten. She’s smiling widely, leaned close to Harry to whisper in his ear; Louis can’t hear what she’s saying over the rush of blood in his ears.

“Get _away_ from him-” Louis snarls, curling his hands into makeshift claws, fury thundering through him strong enough to take down this entire building, let alone this tiny, fragile human. He swings, and his hand is inches from her throat when the blow stops in midair. He’s frozen, stuck halfway through an arcing swing, muscles tensed for a hit that he can’t land. The woman doesn’t even spare him a glance, doesn’t even bother looking at the hands crackling with charged power and wasted energy right next to her ear.

Harry’s still struggling in her grip, yanking at the hand around his throat. “Come on now, darling,” the woman whispers. "Don't be difficult." Another flare of _absolutely fucking not_ tears through Louis and his hand dips a little closer to her exposed throat. He can feel the ward around her crushing down around his fingers, trying to force him back, but he can also feel the strings of magic cutting away slowly, almost imperceptibly. He grits his teeth and pushes harder.

“You want an answer?” Harry hisses, lip curled up in a sneer. _“Never.”_

The woman laughs, and with a start, Louis recognizes her.

“We’ll see,” Caroline says, like Harry’s just denied an invitation for tea instead of whatever weird power play just happened. She looks meaningfully at Louis, and then back to Harry with an eyebrow raised. “I think you’ll change your tune.”

Harry bares his teeth and Louis feels the last of the strings give way, his fingers forcing their way through the rest of the ward. His hand goes flying forward again with a sudden momentum, and his hands scrape across Caroline’s throat, leaving behind an angry red line of blood —  

— and then she’s gone, papers rustling and falling behind her, but the room, the flat, otherwise silent.

“Was that-” Liam trails off.

“The same woman as last time, yeah,” Niall finishes. He’s fumbling with the knots tying an unconscious Ed to a chair in the corner. With an uncomfortable jolting reminder of why they’re actually here Louis moves to help, only to step back with a hiss when the blessed ropes burn his fingers.

“Caroline,” Harry says through gritted teeth, rubbing idly at his throat like he can still feel her hands.

“What did she say to you, Haz?” Liam asks urgently. “Did she tell you anything important? Anything we can use?”

Harry’s face shutters. “No,” he says. “It was nothing. Just- just a threat.” He flicks his glance at Louis, and Liam clears his throat in understanding.

“I’m okay, Haz,” Louis promises.

“For now,” Harry agrees, but then he shakes his head and scrubs a hand through his hair. “What took you lot so long?”

“Some sort of extra ward on the door,” Zayn explains, helping Niall unwrap Ed’s bindings. The other three can’t touch the ropes so it’s slow going, but at least Ed looks better the more the ropes fall away, his skin sickly pale underneath. “You and Louis got through, and then Louis drew a rune for the rest of us. What was that, by the way?”

“It’s the one from the front of the spellbook,” Louis explains, turning to poke through a bookcase. This doesn’t actually seem to be a lived-in flat, unlike last time. There’s just the one chair that Ed is tied to, and mostly-empty bookcases line the walls. Like it's some sort of secret lair or bolthole, or like it was abandoned and repurposed for this exact event. “And the one they carved onto our arms when they summoned us.”

“She had to draw it the last time we dealt with her wards, at the other flat,” Harry says slowly. “Remember? Louis and I jumped through and you three couldn't.”

“So, what, they took a knife to your arms and gave you a free pass through their wards?” Niall asks skeptically. “Why would they do that?”

“Let's question their motives later,” Liam mutters, rubbing at his arms like he's cold. “I want to get out of here, something doesn't feel right.”

Louis feels it too, something sickly and unnatural pulling at him. Maybe it's the residue of Caroline’s spells, maybe it's the burst wards. Whatever it is, Louis doesn't like it.

Ed groans as the last of the ropes fall away, blinking awake with a whimper. “Fuck,” he breathes, flexing his arms. The ropes bit into his skin, leaving harsh indentions that melt away his own glamour, his sigils glowing underneath.

“Ed!” Niall breathes in relief. “Ed, mate, come on, stay with us.”

“‘M alright,” he says, shuddering. His eyes go red-blue-red, hazed with pain. _“Hell,_ this hurts. Did you at least grab her?”

“No, sorry,” Harry apologizes, grinding his fist into his thigh. “She- no, we didn't.”

“Shit,” Ed hisses, shifting in his seat. When Harry shrinks back like he’s been struck, Ed says, “No, Haz, not- I don't blame you. Just- my back.”

They pull him away from the chair but there's blood sticking him to the wood, massive criss-crossing cuts across Ed’s shoulders and back slowly knitting themselves back together.

“Why?” Liam asks sadly. “Why all this?”

“Dunno,” Ed grits out. “Dunno. But,” he exhales, turning to Louis and Harry, “she was awfully interested in you two.”

Harry’s hand spasms in anger, the arm of the chair creaking under the pressure as he clenches his fist. “What did she want?”

“Dunno,” Ed mumbles again. Now that he's healing, out from under the blessed ropes and the oppressive wards, he looks on the verge of unconsciousness. Liam hoists him up in a fireman’s carry. “Basic stuff. Your real names, where your flat is. How you found her last time.” He exhales hard. “Might've answered some of ‘em, don’ remember. Was in a lot ‘f pain. ‘M sorry.”

“Ed, no,” Louis says, reaching out and carefully squeezing his hand. “This isn't your fault.”

“I'll take him home, stay with him for a while,” Liam says.

“No, take him to Jesy’s,” Louis says, rubbing at his temples. “She got through the protections on Ed’s place once, she could do it again. I need you two safe, for my own sanity.”

Liam nods and turns on the spot, disappearing with his usual concussive _thud._ Louis turns, fingers twitching in frustration, and spots a tell-tale blue fire, encased in a clear jar and crackling away silently. He picks it up and throws it against a wall, the jar shattering with a satisfactory crash, the blue fire sputtering out.

“This was it, wasn't it?” he asks, turning to Zayn. “Your vision, the one we all saw. It was this.”

“Can't know for sure, but,” Zayn bites his lip. “Yeah, I think it was.”

“We could've stopped it,” Niall says, rubbing harshly at his face. “Ed didn't have to go through this, we could've figured it out earlier.”

“No,” Zayn's says firmly. “Don't start that. It took me a long time to learn this, but it does no good to dwell. What will happen will happen.” Niall bumps his shoulder against Zayn's, a quiet _thanks._

“Lads,” Harry calls, and they turn to see him standing over yet another black-bound spellbook.  It's been left open to the page they found last time, the ominous possible-prophecy taunting them: _When the Book is taken, so it Begins. When the green fire burns, so it Ends._  

There's a note written in the blank space under the prophecy, in horribly cheerful purple pen, like it’s a shopping list or a cutesy message on a sticky note.

 _If you're reading this, it's not quite time. Getting close, though! I'll be seeing you boys soon.  
_ _Toodles! xx_

Louis wrinkles his nose. “Why do I get the feeling we're somehow doing exactly what she wants?”

“Because,” Harry says heavily. “I think we _are_ doing exactly what she wants.”

 

* * *

 

_London, England | May 2016_

As an immortal, as an angel, specifically, Louis has the whole of time and history mapped to the inside of his head. He can’t do a thing to alter it, not in huge ways, but it’s there, like a roadmap. Like a compass. He can follow it and it’ll take him where he needs to go — he used to doubt that, but then he got an urge to go to Elis and wound up with a soulmate; was heartbroken with grief after Harry’s (temporary) death and stumbled upon Niall; was sent back to Elis against his will and met Harry again, alive and whole.  

But there’s something else inside Louis’ head, too, and this is something he knows Harry has as well, and Niall, and Liam and even Zayn, human as he is. It’s a compass of its own but it guides towards danger, towards calamity and disaster and peril.

It’s why they live in cities surrounded by teeming masses of humanity. It’s why Niall’s skin starts to itch when he’s underground for too long, why he needs to be under the sun even if that’s where all the dangerous stuff is, too. Why Liam was never going to be happy marrying his high school sweetheart and settling down as something safe and boring like a banker, why he raced after fires as though they’d burn the sin and the boredom out of him. It’s why Zayn saw visions in his head and instead of giving in, instead of giving up, he armed himself with magic and steel and a sharp tongue and weaponized the gift he’d been given. It’s why Harry chased after an angel even when he was a human, and why he kept that angel for himself even when he saw how dangerous Louis could be.

It’s why Louis let himself be caught by Harry in the first place.

And it used to be good. The old question of how to stay entertained when facing down forever was easy to answer when Louis’ best friends were all as thirsty for adventure and a little bloodshed as he was.

Harry would get the call for a job in Romania and two days later they’d all be stampeding through an ancient castle, staking vampires and trying to figure out how they were going to get the smell of garlic out of their clothes. They made friends with werewolves in Manitoba, partied with pixies in Bangkok. A thousand demons out for the blood of those who don’t deserve to be hurt have been frightened away by the flare of Louis’ wings; a thousand angels who were looking for an excuse to be cruel in the name of the greater good have met the ends of Harry’s claws. They _lived,_ more than they ever could have done as humans, more than they even realized.

And they were still back at Niall’s in one piece for family dinner every week, armed with a dozen new stories to tell.

But now. Now Louis feels it like a pulse, and he’s never had one of those but he knows that this rhythmic awareness couldn’t be anything else. Danger —  because that’s what this is, even in the form of humans with their weak bones and unprotected skin — lurks, and they can’t outrun it.

So they do the only thing they can do, the thing that makes all of Louis’ instincts _scream_ because it feels so _wrong_ — they split up.

Liam goes with Ed to Jesy’s place over in Paris. Jade’s there too, they’ll take care of each other as Ed recovers. Before they go, Louis pulls Liam off to the side and tells him to avoid going Upstairs for as long as possible.

“The summons is coming,” he says, and Liam’s eyes go wide. “They’re going to need all the help they can get and they’re going to try hard to get you to fight for them, but I just don’t know if I can handle seeing you at the front of a line of soldiers. Please, for me.”

It’s one of the most honest things he’s ever said, and for a moment he wants to pull it out of the air so Liam can’t hear it. They don’t always get along, they will probably never find something they completely agree on, but he’s part of Louis’ _family_. More than a brother, more like someone lodged inside the soft parts of Louis’ heart, like an inextricable piece of him. Despite it all, Louis can’t lose him now.

“Okay, Lou,” Liam says, brow furrowed like he’s worried. “I won’t do it.”

Louis hasn’t heard from him since, but he assumes that means they’re safe.

Zayn is barricaded in his flat, behind a thousand layers of enchantments and protections. He refuses to go anywhere else, no matter what Louis offers — he’s getting visions almost hourly, now, blurs of colors and snatches of sound that make no sense, and the only way he can survive that kind of onslaught is by staying where he feels safest, where the magic is concentrated to help him as much as possible. Louis doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t like any of this, so it’s not as though that’s a new feeling.

When Bressie shows up at Niall’s door again, this time Niall doesn’t turn away his offer for safety. He’s back underground for the time being and Louis likes that least of all, because with Zayn and Liam he can reach out and _find_ them, brush his mind against theirs in a quick _hello I miss you please stay safe_. The Tuatha have been underground so long that they’ve warded themselves against people like Louis checking in, though luckily Niall found a particular spot under a bit of caved-in ceiling that somehow, miraculously, gets cell phone coverage, and he checks in as often as he can.

And then there’s Harry.

Louis is so torn about what to do with Harry that he might self-immolate with it. He knows, he _knows,_ that they’re both equally targets in the eyes of the cult, that they want both Louis and Harry dead and seem to have put plans in place to make that happen.

But there’s something, whispering at the back of his mind, that says the humans want Harry just that _little_ bit more. That there’s a reason Caroline shoved Harry up against a wall like they were in a supernatural teen drama on TV, that she dangled Louis and his safety in front of Harry like a treat for a specific purpose.

Louis wants to rip a hole in the world and hide Harry away, wants to go out and find these- these _ants,_ these tiny, useless _humans_ threatening to take away everything Louis loves, and _tear them apart_ because _how dare they-_

But he won’t. He won’t, he won’t risk it, because if the cult gets him then he can’t protect Harry, and that’s what this is about. Protecting Harry.

Even if Harry seems to think it’s the other way around.

Three days into their self-imposed isolation, barricaded inside their flat with limited access to the outside world, Harry’s pacing in front of the wide windows of their living room, fuming. Louis is slumped on the sofa, staring listlessly at the TV he turned off hours ago. He hasn’t been able to sleep, startling awake at every noise, and he’s cranky and irritable; it doesn’t help that Niall hasn’t checked in today, and that’s flared up Louis’ nerves, and Zayn keeps texting him that the visions are getting worse.

Bloodier.

“Can you just-“ Louis snaps, then closes his mouth with a click of teeth. He just needs to sleep, to spend a few hours not completely on edge.

“Can I what?” Harry grumbles back. “Can I not leave my own flat? Oh, wait, we’re already doing that.”

It’s a weak rebuttal, and Louis makes a face. “If you go outside, it’s almost guaranteed one of them will be waiting for you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“A human pinned you up against a wall last week,” Louis shoots back, annoyed. “Sorry if I don’t quite trust your judgment on what you can and can’t handle.” He scrubs a hand down his face. “Do you need something? I can run out to the shop and be right back.”

Harry spins from the window, eyebrows high. “Oh, _you_ can leave, and I can’t? Is that what this is?”

“Yes,” Louis says, as calmly as he can. “Yes, I can leave, because I’m not worried about myself. I’m worried about _you.”_

“Well _I’m_ worried about _you,”_ Harry growls. “Though you’re making it difficult to do so at the moment.”

Louis stands, tugs at the bottom of his jumper. “Sorry,” he says, pouring the sarcasm on thick. “I suppose I’ll just stop giving a shit about whether you live or die, how’s that sound?”

“Wonderful,” Harry says, rolling his eyes.

“Listen,” Louis says, striding over to Harry. He pokes him hard in the chest, just because he knows it’ll piss Harry off. “This cult has it out for both of us, but the little ringleader hasn’t been whispering in _my_ ear, making threats at _me_. She wants you, specifically, and you won’t tell me what she said but I _know_ you know why.”

“It doesn’t _matter,”_ Harry hisses, swatting Louis’ hand away. “It doesn’t matter exactly what she said, because the end result is that she _doesn’t_ care about me, she was just taunting me about hurting _you.”_

“You’re so infuriating,” Louis says, the words ridiculous and pushed out by stress and sleep deprivation — when _is_ the last time he slept? A month ago? More? — but he doesn’t pull them back. “ _Talk_ to me, just tell me what she said, maybe there’s something we can use-“

“Oh Hell, would you just-“ Harry growls, then slams their mouths together. Louis makes a shocked noise against his mouth but gives in, lets Harry take and take because that’s all he’s ever wanted, really, is to be able to give Harry everything he is.  

Louis bites down on Harry’s lip and swallows the gasp. His hands rip at Harry’s clothes, and Harry hisses something about vintage Gucci but Louis shuts him up with another hard kiss, scraping and raw. His hands scratch paths across Harry’s ribs, score lines down his back, and Harry arches into him, whining.

They tumble towards the bed but don’t quite make it, and Louis is spun so that his palms hit the mattress, his legs kicked wide. Harry falls to his knees behind him, tearing Louis’ sweatpants down until they’re around his knees. Two large, warm palms land on Louis’ arse and then he’s gasping, crumpling forward as Harry works him open with a quick tongue. There’s no finesse, but Louis doesn’t need it; his nerves are livewires and his head is a mess of Harry and fear and Harry and tension and Harry and _more._

“I’ve got you,” Harry murmurs and Louis knows that, that’s the whole issue, isn’t it — they care _so damn much_ that they’re killing each other to keep each other safe, scratching and clawing at their self-enforced isolation because they can’t be _out there,_ fixing the problem. But Louis lets the words hit him the way Harry intends and he sinks even lower, head hung low, chin against his chest. His mouth is making noises but he couldn’t tell you what they sound like, because he can’t focus on anything except the sloppy-slick sound of Harry’s mouth.

“Fuck,” Louis breathes, and Harry makes his own noise at that, hard-edged and needy, and scrapes his teeth against Louis’ rim. Louis buckles and Harry hauls him upright again, tossing him onto the bed with ease.

“Take off your clothes,” he demands, his own hands pushing the tatters of his shirt off the hinges of his elbows, shoving his jeans down in one fell swoop. Louis scrambles to do the same, his hands shaking as he grabs for Harry’s waist and pulls him down.

Harry rolls them so that Louis is astride his hips and kisses a path across Louis’ chest, lips lingering on the topmost edge of the burn scar. “M sorry,” he presses there at the damaged skin, and for a confused second Louis thinks he’s apologizing for a centuries-old wound that was absolutely not his fault. But then Harry says, “I just can’t- I keep thinking about them _getting_ you, and I can’t-“

“I know,” Louis says, little more than a gasp when Harry’s mouth finds a nipple. He waves his hand and a drawer springs open, a bottle of lube colliding hard with his hand. He slicks a finger and slides it in himself, the path made easy by Harry’s mouth. Harry steals the lube and adds his own finger next to Louis’, making him throw his head back and moan.

“I love you,” Harry mouths against his neck.

“Harry, _oh, fuck,_ I love you too, just want you to be safe-“

“Do anything to keep you away from them-“

“Can’t be without you, not — _oh_ — not anymore-“

Harry rolls them over and slides smoothly into Louis with one thrust, and they continue to murmur nonsense into each other’s skin, promises that they’ll be okay and they’ll get through this, that there’s a solution they just haven’t thought of yet.

“This is definitely,” Harry pants, rolling his hips smoothly, his hand curling in Louis’ hair, the other gripping hard at a hipbone, “not the sexiest conversation we’ve had.”

Louis huffs a laugh and then Harry sucks a mark onto his neck, and the world flashes white like he’s been hit with a streak of lightning. Harry follows a few moments later, gasping quietly into the skin of Louis’ neck, his eyes flashing black like they always do when he’s overwhelmed.

Louis curls around Harry and traces a soft finger up his ribcage and to the hollow of his throat, up and down and up again. Harry’s curls are soft against his nose, his skin warm and bruised a little from Louis’ mouth.

For the first time in a month, Louis feels like he can let go, just for a little while, and he drifts off to sleep with the sound of Harry’s steady heartbeat against him.  
  
  


 

When Louis crawls back into wakefulness later, it’s because Harry’s phone is ringing and he’s shifting to reach for it, _Sympathy for the Devil_ ringing out quietly.

“What, Nick?” Harry whispers. His voice is throaty, which hopefully means he got a bit of rest too.

“Harry…” Nick’s quiet voice from the phone speaker trails off, and Louis feels his stomach drop. Nick is a lot of things — loud, attention-grabbing, rude when it suits him but only to people he mostly likes — but he’s very rarely hesitant. “They’re calling everyone in. This is the real deal.”

“What are you talking about?” Harry hisses.

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Nick says, and his voice is muffled like he’s running a hand over his face. “It’s a miracle we’ve managed to keep the fighting from happening this long. But angels are being called back and we know they’re assembling for battle, we can’t ignore that.”

“But what’s there to fight about?” Harry asks, sitting up. “This cult — they’re out for _all_ of us, Nick. Not just angels, not just demons, all of us. And if we turn on each other, it only helps them.”

“Peace and love is all well and good for you and your little friends,” Nick snaps, “but the rest of the world isn’t Sesame Street, and we do not all get along. Your average demon isn’t going to care that someone else kicked off the war we always knew was coming, they’re just going to want to be there alive when it ends.”

It’s quiet for a long time, long enough that Louis feels sleep pulling at him again. He and Harry can fix this, he thinks muzzily; they’ve done it before, they’ve talked down both sides from outright war on multiple occasions.

They just need a plan, that’s all, and they’ve always been good at plans.  

He falls asleep feeling hopeful, for the first time in a long time.

  
  
  


When Louis wakes again he’s alone.

Not just alone in bed, alone in the flat. The air feels empty, and the curtains are drawn so he has no idea what time it is. He yawns and points his toes, then stretches out his arm to grab his phone, see if Niall ever checked in.

Something around his wrist keeps that from happening.

“What the hell,” he mumbles, sleepy confusion turning to horror as he realizes his motion was stopped by thick ropes around his wrists, tied neatly and securely to the bedposts and, going by the faint burn on his skin, the ropes are blessed so he can’t rip free.

Both wrists and both ankles are tied down, and he knows it’s useless but just for a moment he struggles against them, gasping as the burning intensifies the more he pulls.

“Harry?” he calls, because now that he knows blessed rope is involved, sapping at his powers, he thinks that maybe Harry’s still here, he just can’t feel him. When there’s no answer, he tries to clear his throat against the rising panic. _“Harry?”_

No answer.

Okay, okay. Maybe Harry’s fine. Maybe he slipped out just to get away from the flat for a while, since he hated being cooped up. Or he could be at Zayn’s, checking in on him. The cult could’ve slipped into the flat and tied Louis up without hurting Harry; they must’ve knocked him out with a spell to keep him from waking.

He’s fine, Harry’s fine, he’s sure of it. He can’t reach out and check, not with his powers all blocked up by the ropes, but he knows. He’ll just have to do it the human way, find a way out of these bindings so he can get to his phone. Harry’s probably already texted, worried that he hasn’t heard from Louis yet. He’s probably fine.

Louis looks over at the night table where he’d left his phone the night before, and then he finds himself struggling uselessly against the ropes once more.

Because on the table is a note, in Harry’s unmistakable scrawl, propped up so Louis can read it without moving closer.

 _Don’t come after me. This is for the best.  
_ _I love you._

_H_

The note is propped up by a clear glass jar, and inside the jar is a bright green fire.

 

* * *

 

_Marne River, France | 1914_

The first time Louis realizes the scope, the sheer size and weight and _vastness_ of humanity, he's standing in the ruins of a battlefield.

The Marne is muddied red from blood, the ground churned up from horse hooves and panicked feet, tanks and the wheels of carts making small valleys in the soft dirt. Louis’ stomach hurts, and it’s not because of the hot weight of the rifle across his back, the smell of copper and shit and dirty water and _death_ , it’s not that. Well, it’s the death, it’s definitely the death, but it’s not the dozens, hundreds, thousands of bodies around him, laid out in the aftermath of sanctioned brutality; it’s just one, one amongst many, nearly alone in a desolate field.

It’s not Harry, thank Heaven — a regular bullet couldn’t keep him down, not for long, but there are immortals on both sides of this fight and stranger things than demons dying have happened in war. No, it’s not Harry, but it’s-

It’s just a human. A man — no, he’s not old enough to be a man. He’d lied about his age, joined up at seventeen, tried to grow out his stubble to make it seem more realistic, but the patchy hair on his cheeks just made him look even younger. A kid playing dress-up. A kid who won’t see nineteen.

 

 

Harry and Louis met him back in England, and they were shipped out together. Patrick was slim and lithe and long-legged like a colt, but bright-eyed and keen. He could peel an apple with a knife all in one long strip, would stick one end of the curled peel in his mouth like a noodle when he was done, laughing and covered in juice. Apples got to be scarce, after a while, but when C Company got a couple in their ration packs they always let Patrick peel them for the entertainment, then he would cut slices off and hand them out equally.

Patrick joined for glory, or so he said, but Harry didn’t even bother checking with Louis about the way the lie twisted inside Patrick, dark smoke in his otherwise golden veins. They both knew it wasn’t that simple; good men weren’t drawn to war for meaningless pride. It took a while, cajoling in only the way beings who can see into souls can be, but Patrick finally admitted the truth.

“I’m looking for someone,” he told them, hard set about his mouth, a new expression on his young face. His voice shook a little. “I’m- yeah. I’m looking for someone. He’s… he’s important.” And then, like a physical act, he drew his composure back around himself like a cloak, and he smiled. “Besides, I knew it was a matter of time before the government started conscripting people into service anyway. Why not make the choice to go on my own?”

Harry and Louis had exchanged a quick look at that. Patrick _was_ looking for someone, that part was true, but the rest of it was a flimsy excuse at best and a dangerous leap of logic at worst, and that dangerous leap had led him here, to the middle of a warzone.

“The war might be over before your eighteenth birthday, though,” Harry had pointed out, studiously not watching Patrick for a reaction. Louis had stayed quiet — he knew then just as he knows now exactly how long this mess of a war will last, and it won’t be over within the year, that’s for sure; but he can’t exactly go around predicting the end of the Great War for everyone to hear, so he stays quiet — and Patrick chewed on his lip for a moment. “You might have joined prematurely. You could _die,_ Patrick.”

“Nah,” Pat said, flippant. His eyes were still bright, even months after they left London for France, and Louis appreciated that. A little light in the darkness would always be welcome. “I’m where I’m meant to be.”

Angels are drawn to war like moths to light, like demons to chaos, but Louis didn’t know humans were the same way. They can pretend all they like to be about peace and happiness and brotherhood, but Louis has been around too long to believe anything they say, and he’s seen too many wars that led to people crying out, “This is madness, this can’t continue!” when it always happened again as soon as war became a memory instead of reality.  

And so maybe Pat didn’t have to be there, sharing a trench with Harry and Louis and a man named Kent who no one liked but, due to the warped psychology of wartime, who they’d all give their lives for if it was called into question. But Pat had blood in his eyes same as the rest of them, good heart and gold soul notwithstanding, and it was _his_ home under threat back in London, _his_ family that hid in fear of air raid sirens. He did have reason to be here, even if it wasn’t the reason he said.

And he was looking for someone. That was the important part.

“A brother?” Harry had guessed under his breath. He and Louis could’ve shook it out of Pat, scared him into sharing and feeding their rabid curiosity (because one look at the black of Harry’s eyes, the shadow of Louis’ wings, and anyone would babble), but they didn’t want to do that. They’d already talked him into the truth once, and they didn’t like pushing their advantages.

They _liked_ Patrick, and Louis had never had a brother before — Niall doesn’t count, and neither does Zayn; they aren’t his brothers, they’re pieces of his soul split up into other people, just like Harry is — but he thought this must be what it would be like.

But it wasn’t a brother Pat was looking for. Instead, when C Company was stationed for a week outside Liège, they discovered exactly who Pat joined the army and went to war to find.

They found him while on an evening patrol; he was half-delirious in an alleyway between an abandoned cinema and a café with broken windows, propped up against the wall and, presumably, had been left for dead. He looked like just another body under the wreckage, but when Pat saw him it was like someone reached in and yanked the breath out of him.

“Jackie?” Pat had said, and Louis had never heard Pat’s voice wobble like it did that day.

But Jackie, whoever he was, made a pained noise and it was like the breath was punched right back into Patrick, and he grabbed at the rough brick wall next to him as his knees went watery. Louis scooped Pat up with a hand around his waist, keeping him from buckling, and nodded to Harry. “Can you carry this guy back? We shouldn’t stay out this long.”

Harry’d shouldered his rifle and slung Jackie — who _was_ this? and why did the sight of him make Patrick’s hands shake when even a grenade landing in the mud mere meters away had never done the same? — over his shoulder. If anyone else had been around, they might’ve questioned Harry’s ability to toss a soldier over his back with only one arm like a half-empty sack of flour, but Louis and Harry had been doing this a long time, and no one had ever caught on before, and they wouldn’t this time, either.

Back at the camp, they snuck Jackie into Harry and Louis’ tent, forced water into Patrick and cleaned Jackie’s wounds, a mess of shrapnel in his leg and a bloodied cut on his scalp, a bullet wound nicking his waist. If he hadn’t been malnourished he’d probably already have been back on his feet; he was clearly a big guy, wide-shouldered and strong before war got to him like it got to everyone else (except the immortals among them, but you’d be surprised what a bit of dirt and oversized fatigues could do to make someone look just as skinny as the human soldiers). But he _was_ malnourished, and dehydrated, and who knew how long he'd been in that alley before C Company got there. His chances weren’t amazing.  

Patrick wouldn’t sit down, wouldn’t stop pacing even though every noise out of Jackie made him wobble on shaky ankles, until finally Harry kicked out a chair and gave Pat a pointed look, _sit down._

The other C Company lads called Harry _Mum_ — affectionately, of course, because Louis wouldn’t have let them continue if it wasn’t done with love — but he only fussed when the boys wanted it, wanted a bit of a cuddle and to pretend, just for a moment, that they weren’t in the middle of Hell on Earth. But being Mum meant being hard sometimes, too, and Harry was good at that part as well.

“Drink your water and shut your mouth,” Harry instructed, and Patrick did what he was told: he drank his water and kept his mouth firmly shut, until he fell into an exhausted sleep with his chin against his chest, snoring softly.

As soon as Patrick was out, Harry pulled back Jackie’s bandages and Louis laid his hands on his ruined skin, guiding the bits of metal out with careful precision, his magic focused like a scalpel. He still couldn’t heal a human — after he got Harry back from the dead all those years ago, Louis enlisted Niall’s help and they dug through ancient libraries and stories, an attempt to retroactively learn what Louis need to know as Harry laid dying, but they never found answers. At this point, Louis thought there was no answer because it just wasn’t _possible_ ; angels weren't supposed to interrupt what fate intended, even if what fate intended was cruel — but he could do a lot to help with pain now. And so he fed energy into Jackie and took out what hurt he could, funneling it into himself and feeling it light up his veins as though Jackie had offered it in prayer.

“Shit,” Louis said, concentrating hard on not letting his wings burst out, “it’s been a while.” Harry grinned and knocked their shoulders together, and they watched the pained furrow of Jackie’s brow smooth out as he slid into a full sleep.

In the morning, when Jackie stirred in his sleep, Patrick was there within seconds.

“Jackie,” he’d said, voice hoarse and shaky. “Jackie, baby, wake up. Jack? Please.”

Jackie groaned and sat up, rubbing at the tender spot on his head. He blinked hard a few times when he opened his eyes and saw Pat there, like this was a dream he wasn’t particularly sure he wanted to wake up from.

“Pats?” he’d murmured, and Pat had choked out a desperate sob before grabbing him round the shoulders and kissing him like he was drowning and Jackie’s mouth held all the air. Jackie clutched back just as hard, his knuckles going white where they twisted in the fabric of Pat’s fatigues. After a moment, Patrick seemed to remember where exactly he was; he yanked himself back and turned to Louis and Harry, looking ready to rip a hole in the wall of the tent so he and Jackie could escape if the two of them gave him trouble for kissing a boy.

Louis rolled his eyes fondly. “You idiot,” he said, and tipped his head toward Harry meaningfully. “Like _we’re_ going to judge.”

“Oh,” Patrick said, deflating so that he looked less like a cat with his hackles up. “Good. Because, erm. I love him.”

“Jesus, Pats,” Jackie muttered, but his face was flushed.

“Alright,” Harry nodded, and that was that. “Now quit being ridiculous and tell us the story.”

So Pat told the story. They had been neighbors, he and Jack, grew up in a tight-knit little borough in London and went to the same school. Jack’s sisters helped Pat and his family when Pat’s father died, and the two families merged over time, combining resources in a time where there wasn’t a lot to spare. Patrick loved Jackie like a brother and then he turned sixteen, and Jackie kissed him, and then Patrick loved Jackie but it wasn’t so much like being brothers anymore. Their families knew — Jack’s eldest sister disapproved, but only because being around Patrick made Jack irresponsible and silly, a teenage boy instead of a potential breadwinner for hungry mouths — and everything seemed to be okay.

Then Jackie joined the army, because his sister kept saying he was letting the family down and his siblings didn’t have enough to eat. He promised Pat he’d be fine, that he’d probably be stuck in trenches for a few years while everyone else did all the fun fighting bits, and then he’d come home with stories about the world outside London and maybe a few nice scars.

But then he stopped answering Pat’s letters, and it had been six months, and Pat wasn’t old enough for the army but he forced his way in anyway, working for a free ride to France and then to Belgium to find the only person who ever made Pat’s life good.

“Fuck’s sake,” Louis had said when the story was done, shaking his head and biting back a smile. “You romantic shit.”

Patrick just grinned, and held Jack’s hand like a lifeline, and didn’t disagree.

And they, for a while, were happy, all four of them. It was still war, and Jackie was still torn up from the shrapnel that took a long time to heal, and there was still the ever-present looming of danger overhead, but they were happy. The rest of C Company was a little confused when Harry, Louis, and Patrick showed up with an extra in tow to mess that first evening, but no one was going to question anything that made little Patty smile like that, and another gun in the ranks would only help, no matter where he came from.

Jackie sent a letter home and so did Patrick — _all’s fine here, don’t worry about us_ — and the company rerouted back into France, marching steadily towards the fighting, the _crack-crack_ of distant rifles and the low drone of airplanes keeping them awake at night. Patrick turned eighteen and they celebrated by not dying, huddling together in a copse of trees as bullets peeled the bark off the birches around them all night.  

There was a bit of a scuffle outside a tiny French village and C Company spent six days crammed into poorly-dug trenches, waiting for someone to take out the couple of snipers who had their eyes on them. It should have been terrible, it should have been a _nightmare_ , and maybe it was, but this nightmare wasn’t so bad.

At the end of the first day they spent trapped in a trench, when Pat and Jack’s stomachs were rumbling from a light fare of old bread and dirty water, Harry and Louis slid their rations over to them without a word. When Pat pushed for an answer, _why? You need to eat too, just give me a reason_ why, Louis flared his eyes fire-red and told him not to worry about it, his voice a deep rumble.

But, of course, that only made Pat more insatiable for answers, and there was no way to get away from him thanks to the sniper perched up on the hillside. So they ended up telling Patrick and Jack the brief overview of it all, the whole wide expanse of _I’m an angel and he’s a demon and yes we’re supposed to be rivals but that never really panned out._ Pat and Jack were a good audience, wide-eyed and responsive, and it was nice for Louis to get to stretch his wings a bit, now that he wasn't worried about keeping the boys from seeing anymore.

“Do you mean to tell me,” Patrick said, hands clasped together under his chin, “that I’ve been trenchmates with a couple of _goddamn_ _monsters_ who _can’t die_ , and the worst thing you’ve done is make sure I clean my gun properly and don’t swear too much?”

“That’s about it, yeah,” Harry said pleasantly.

Patrick thought about it for a moment, then turned to Louis. “Sorry about the ‘goddamn’, earlier. Shouldn’t talk about your da like that.”

Louis laughed so hard that Kent, in the next trench over, tossed the crusted end of a loaf of old bread at him to shut him up.

And time continued marching right along with them.  

Louis and Harry were drawn to war and so were Patrick and Jack, and they understood each other in ways that didn’t make sense outside the context of gunfire and the smell of smoke. It didn’t matter that Louis was older than the Earth or that Harry had been born when Rome was still an empire; they were all soldiers, and everyone looks the same ducking away from bullets.

It was bad, but sometimes it was good, too, and then came today. Then came the [Marne](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.3ssv9g7xnh2h).  
  


 

There have been a hundred thousand battles in Louis’ long lifetime but he’s never stuck around for the aftermath of any of them. He knows why he avoided it for so long, now, because he hates it, he _hates_ this with all his heart, because there are a thousand dead men around him staring up at him with sightless eyes but all he can see is Jack, and the way he’s hunched over the body of someone who was too young to be here, who will never get older.

Louis has never vomited before because his body is made up of stardust instead of organs and acid, but there’s a first time for everything.

“Pats,” Jack keeps saying. He’s not crying, and Louis thinks this is worse, somehow. The blankness, the inability to accept it. Patrick’s head is Jack’s lap, and he strokes his hair back off his pale forehead, slick with damp and sweat. Harry takes a hesitant step forward (the company is moving out, they have to _go_ , no matter how much Louis wants to sink to his knees next to Jack and never move again) but he stops when Jack says, “Patrick? You can’t leave me here.” His voice cracks like an old mirror. “You _promised_.”

They looked at each other like Louis and Harry do and now one of them is _gone_. It’s unimaginable; Louis has known these two silly, ridiculous teenagers for mere months but he can’t picture one without the other. He wants to rip the grace from his veins and give it to Patrick, to bring him back, but he _can’t_. His grace is still firmly stuck to his bones and Patrick is still dead, his heart stopped by a piece of lead.

Louis thinks, for a moment, about the possibility of Pat coming back on his own, of being given wings and a sword and told to keep looking for lost souls like he did when he was alive, but that’s not likely. Soldiers are almost never made into guardian angels, there’s too much blood on their hands.

But at least Pat’s soul was gold, and so he’s probably already Upstairs, watching Jack fall to pieces in the muddy field he left him in.

“You promised,” Jack says again.

And that's when the teeming mass of humanity hits Louis like a hammer, like a wave, because there are a thousand dead men around him and two soulmates torn apart by a hole in a boy’s chest, and it was all done — what, in the name of _power_? Of money, or territory, of invisible arbitrary lines between countries and the hurt feelings of a few humans? Humanity crushes down on Louis because for the first time, he’s realizing that he always thought of humans to himself as as ants to a spider, but he'd forgotten that a swarm of ants can overpower even far larger targets. Even spiders.

Or maybe that's not the right metaphor.

Maybe Louis is a flame, and a single drop of water, a single human, causes him no trouble. A few drops, a few humans, that's no more difficult. But a thunderstorm, an innumerable deluge of raindrops throwing themselves his way? A thunderstorm can halt a wildfire, no matter the wildfire’s strength.

Louis is a wildfire and humanity is a thunderstorm, stopping him in his path, and it took two boys in love in dirty trenches to make him see.

But now he does, he sees, and he’ll never forget that humans are just as dangerous as storm clouds, and that he has magic in his fingertips and holy blood in his veins, but he’s never felt quite this small.

 

* * *

     

_London, England | May 2016_

Louis has no idea how long he lies there, watching green flames flicker against clear glass, angry tears coursing helplessly down his cheeks as he yanks at the bindings around his wrists and ankles.

He felt useless, long ago, in the face of Harry's disease when he was still human. He was useless because he could claw and tear and rip and threaten and intimidate and _scream_ all he wanted, but he couldn't fight Harry's own body, the sickly cells destroying themselves from within. He was a bystander, all his immortality glimmering in his fingertips and, ultimately, of no more use than the poultices and salves of the human doctor.

Louis doesn't feel useless now, tied and left behind. He feels _incensed_ , he feels hurt and lost and terrified, but not useless. His power is still being sapped by the blessed ropes, but that's a temporary problem. Humans tied these ropes and he's an _angel_ ; he's going to get out eventually, even if it’s just by outliving the humans who put him here, even if he’s stuck here until the wood rots from old age. He doesn’t think it’ll be that long before he’s found, but he can wait if it is. And when he’s out—

And when he’s out, vengeance isn’t going to be a strong enough term for what he’ll wreak.

“Shit, _shit,_ Niall, he’s here,” Louis hears some indiscriminate amount of time later. Louis can’t see Liam, but apparently Liam can see him. “At their flat, he’s here.” At the sound of the frantic thrumming undertone in Liam’s voice Louis pulls hard on his ropes, wanting _free,_ and barely bites back a scream at the roar of pain up his limbs. “Fuck, Ni, _hurry.”_

There’s a crunching sound as Liam tosses his phone aside and then he’s there at Louis’ side, his eyes wide and scared. He reaches for Louis’ wrist and draws back with a hiss before Louis can warn him about the blessed ropes.

“Lou,” he says, voice strangled.

“‘M fine,” Louis says through gritted teeth. “Just- need out of these.”

“Yeah, yeah, course,” Liam says, laying his hand on Louis’ arm like he can’t help it. “What _happened?_ None of us have heard from you in three days, and Harry’s not answering his phone. Zayn’s been trying to find him with some locating spell, but he can’t get a lock on him-“

“Shit, _shit,”_ Louis says, the sudden, crashing wave of his own panic threatening to overwhelm him. He’d only kept it at bay all these hours by pretending Harry was just fine, just somewhere else and not in the flat, probably being kept safe by their friends. It was a weak hope at best, but at least he’s not been lying dead somewhere in this room and Louis just couldn’t see him; that might be worse than the hundred different horrible scenarios rolling through Louis’ mind right now. “Okay, _shit,_ I don’t know what happened, I just woke up and...”

Liam spots the note and the jar of fire at possibly the worst moment, when Louis’ voice wobbles with pain as Liam accidentally makes his leg shift and the ropes move against his ankle bones. “This is Harry’s writing,” Liam says, snatching up the note, and the panic isn’t crashing into Louis now so much as drowning him. “Did Harry _leave you_ here?”

Louis doesn’t have to answer (and doesn’t know what he’d say if he opened his mouth, other than _fuck no and fuck you_ ). Niall and Zayn materialize in the doorway and Zayn grabs the wall, looking like his knees have gone weak.

“Oh thank fuck,” he breathes. “You’re okay.”

Niall doesn’t say anything, just rips the rope from around Louis’ ankle with a vicious tug, and the twinge of achey _wrongness_ of the rope against his skin is nothing compared to the rush of his power dripping slowly back into him, like sunlight slowly pouring through a barely-cleaned window.

Louis’ wrists and ankles are rubbed raw and angry red and all he wants to do is _punch something_ but he sits up slowly anyway, letting the rage simmer. “What do we know?” he asks, rubbing at his chafed skin absently, his full attention on Niall.

“Not much,” he admits. “Zayn’s laying down tracking spells left and right but there’s only so much we can do and stay incognito at the same time. We couldn’t even get over here immediately once we figured out something might have been wrong, had to wait until the coast was clear.”

He looks apologetic, and Louis waves it away. “I want you to stay safe, not kill yourselves trying to get to me when you weren’t even sure anything was wrong.” He takes a deep breath. “Okay, so. We don’t know where Harry is, and we’ve got, well-“ he waves at the note in Liam’s hand. He passes it to Niall, who frowns deeply. “The tracking spells aren’t working at all?” Louis asks Zayn.

“No,” he shakes his head. “I couldn’t even find you here in your own flat. There’s serious magic at work here, Lou, and they’re covering their tracks. If they don’t want to be found, I don’t know if I can find them.”

“The fire’s green,” Liam points out, like no one had noticed. “Wasn’t that the prophecy? When the fire turns green, that’s when shit’s going down.”

“It could be a warning,” Zayn offers.

“Or a threat,” Niall says.

“Or it’s nothing at all,” Louis says, scrubbing his aching hands through his hair in frustration.

It’s quiet for a minute. “Maybe,” Niall allows. “But we have to consider that there’s something bigger happening here, too.”

“Let me see the note,” Zayn says, and Niall hands it over. Louis spent the first few hours after he woke up tracing the letters with his eyes over and over, until they were burned into him. _Don’t come after me. This is for the best. I love you._ Then Zayn voices the fear that’s been lodged in the back of Louis’ throat for the past three days. “Is this sabotage, or self-sacrifice?”

It’s quiet for a moment, and Louis knows the other three are waiting for him. “I… I don’t know,” Louis admits. “I must’ve been knocked unconscious somehow when Harry was- when he- _fuck,”_ he swears, scrubbing at his face this time. “The thing is, I can see it either way. If he had a choice, he’d have to be dragged away,” the _from me_ goes unsaid, but the others know it anyway, and it’s been a mutual weakness for a long time. “But…”

“But if it was between him being taken or you, he’d go so you’d be safe,” Niall finishes, nodding. There’s nothing to say to that, so Louis wraps his arms around his knees and tries to stay calm. He can’t help Harry if he’s not functioning from fear.

“Maybe he went willingly.”

Louis’ head snaps up and he has Liam by the throat before he can even recognize the pain in his limbs from moving so fast. Niall is yanking at his wrists, and Zayn is yelling, “Louis, let _go,”_ but Louis just snarls at Liam and ignores the commotion.

“What did you just say?”

 _Say something else_ is what Louis means. _Don’t make this mistake._

“I said,” Liam says roughly past Louis’ hand against his trachea, “that maybe Harry went with them on his own.” And then, somehow, he makes it _worse._ “It’s not like there haven’t been signs.”

He crumples against the wall when Louis throws him, but he bounces back up immediately, his aura glowing hot.

“Liam!” Zayn snaps. “What the hell, this isn’t _Harry’s_ fault-“  

“It’s true though, isn’t it?” Liam says. At Louis’ growl, his shoulders tighten. “All I’m saying is that it’s suspicious that _our_ group is the one being targeted, and we’re the only one with a demon amongst us who suddenly goes missing right before the grand finale? That’s a hell of a coincidence.”

Niall makes a sound like an angry cat. “Fuck off, Payno, Harry’s been hurt in this too-“

“Has he? Because from where I’m standing it looks like he’s been mostly collateral-free.”

“What about Ed?” Zayn asks wildly. “You think he would hurt Ed? Or Pixie, or any of the other demons who were attacked?”

Liam shrugs, his eyes hard. “There are always sacrifices in this sort of thing.”

Louis laughs, the first noise he’s made in a few minutes, and it’s harsh and grating. “Funny you use that word, sacrifice,” he says.

“Why?” Liam asks. “What’s funny about people being deemed useless enough that they can be cut out without remorse?”

“Nothing,” Louis says, “that’s exactly my point.” Then, “Have you been called Upstairs during any of this?”

“What?” Liam asks, thrown off. “No? I’ve never been in for questioning at all.”

Louis hums to himself. “Interesting. Because you sound exactly like the Seven, telling me to watch out for Harry, that he’d stab us all in the back with no remorse.”

Liam throws his arms out like Louis has just proved his point. “Exactly! If even the Seven — the most powerful angels in existence, by the way — are on my side, why are we even still talking about this?”

“It’s funny, see,” Louis voice goes icy as he continues, “because while the Seven don’t trust Harry, they were also easily prepared to sacrifice _you.”_

Liam’s mouth closes with a snap.

“Yeah,” Louis continues, making his way over to Liam, who for the first time looks unsure. “Those ‘most powerful angels in existence’ were fine with letting you die as long as more important immortals stayed alive. Meanwhile, Harry has never _once_ doubted _you,_ or suggested that you are anything less than _incredibly important_ to him.”

It’s quiet for a long, long minute.

Louis can see Liam’s mind crashing through decades worth of interactions with Harry, trying to find one instance of him being anything less than one of Liam’s best friends (no matter how unwillingly sometimes on Liam’s part), and coming up blank.

“Do we have that settled, then?” Louis asks, crossing his arms over his chest. “Because if it’s all the same to you, I think I’d like to start looking for Harry now.”

Liam clears his throat and, slowly, like it almost hurts, he drags his eyes up to meet Louis’. He nods once, and says, “Yeah. Let’s find Harry.”

 

* * *

                    

_Campeche (present-day Mexico) | 1669_

There’s a certain grace to a cutlass that other swords just don’t have, and that’s why Louis grins as he catches one, tossed to him across a deck bustling with shouting men. Bartolomeu’s ship had been ambushed in the night but they’re a good crew, and they know each other well enough that they could scramble up into a defense without having to speak.

[Bartolomeu](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.2edjdvnp92i7) roars a challenge from the ship’s wheel, a _come and take it if ye dare_ that the Spanish sailors rush to answer.

Harry’s fighting with a man twice his size and it’s almost like watching a dance, their feet slipping on the seawater-wet deck, the flash of steel as swords clang together, moonlight dancing on the edges of Harry’s sweat-slick limbs. Louis turns just in time and parries away a slashing cut that had been aimed at his temple, a small, mousy man looking displeased that his sneak attack didn’t work. Louis knocks his opponent’s sword from his hand with a flick of the wrist and kicks his legs out from under him, and turns back to see Harry finish off his challenger as well. They meet each other’s eyes across the deck and move together, going back to back to face the circle of reinforcements who’ve come to try their luck.

It’s dark, and if anyone tries to claim they saw something Louis will helpfully convince them otherwise, but he lets his eyes flash fire red just before the first man charges.

  
  


Later, Louis and Harry accept their cut of the loot with wide smiles, tucking away their bags of eight until they get back to shore and the taverns that wait for them there. Harry spends most of his on booze and a giant feathered hat. Louis keeps his, the silver coins jangling brightly at his waist, until he sees something on the wrist of one of the tavern wenches and he pulls her aside.

Harry smiles in confusion when Louis clips the simple bracelet around his wrist later that night, his eyebrows raised in question.

“Apparently,” Louis says, drawing Harry close. They won’t be watched here; Bartolomeu’s crew is too notorious to get any sort of trouble, and there’s debauchery much more interesting to watch than two quiet men in the corner of a bar. “These bracelets are quite the high fashion back in Barcelona.”

Harry’s smile, if possible, widens further. “Oh, are they?” He inspects the jewelry again, the candlelight and torches lighting up the dim room glinting off the silver.

“According to Isabella they are,” Louis shrugs, and waves at the girl whose bracelet he’d spotted earlier. Her painted-on smile goes from sultry to sincere, and she wiggles her fingers back and winks. “And I can’t have you looking anything less than fashionable at all times.”

Harry laughs, and raises his eyebrows again at the bracelet, which sits pristine and shining next to the frayed cuff of his sheer white shirt and his dirty, tattooed skin darkened by the sun.

“Well,” Louis allows, “it’s a work in progress.”

Harry snorts, but dips down to kiss Louis quickly. “I love it,” he says. “Now. Let’s see if my new bracelet matches my new hat.”

The next day, the crew of the _Santiago_ sets sail for Tortuga, the sun high in the sky guiding their way out of the cove and into open waters. It’s Harry’s turn up in the crow’s nest, and he clenches his teeth around the blade of his knife as he climbs the rigging, shimmying up the mast to the seeing spot. Every time he swings his right hand upward, his new bracelet catches the light, the Spanish coins reflecting the sunlight where they swing against his wrist.

 

* * *

 

_London, England | May 2016_

“The issue,” Zayn says, “is that no one individual seems to have enough power to break through their spell.”

“This is the,” Niall waves his hand vaguely, “obfuscation thing, yeah?”

“Right,” Zayn nods. “The cult is hiding itself from us, but they’re also hiding us from each other, just to make things harder and slow things down. We can’t track Harry, and we can’t track the humans, and if we get separated we can’t track each other.”

“Great,” Liam grumbles, but pinches his mouth shut when Louis shoots him a look.

“Can we, I don’t know… break through that power somehow?” Louis asks. “We don’t know how big this cult is, but it’s just a bunch of humans. We’re immortals, we’re thousands of times stronger than they are.”

Zayn taps at his lip, muttering to himself, “Maybe. It might be possible to… But then, if it goes wrong, there’s always- and we can’t really afford to-“

“Zayn,” Louis interrupts, desperation leaking into his voice. “Can it be done?”

“I- I don’t know,” Zayn admits. He takes a seat on the edge of Louis and Harry’s bed, the sheets still in disarray from Louis’ days spent tied up there (in not the usual fun way, either). “Maybe? But the risks if it didn’t work, or if the spell has some kind of trigger that echoes back on us… a lot could go wrong.”

“But if it works…”

“If it works,” Zayn allows, “all I need is a few seconds. I’ve got a spell on myself that’s constantly going, keeping the visions at bay so I can fucking _concentrate_.” He pulls back his sleeve, showing Louis a rune drawn onto his inner arm with some sort of dark blue liquid. Louis hadn’t even thought about how it was possible for Zayn to be out of his flat, when last he’d heard he’d been inundated with paralyzing visions. “As soon as I wipe this off, the visions will come back, and if we can break through the obfuscation I should be able to see what’s happening.”

“Won’t it be overwhelming?” Niall asks, worried. “You’ve got days worth of visions built up, couldn’t that go badly somehow?”

“It probably will,” Zayn says, mouth pinched. “It’ll hurt like hell, at the least. But if I can fish out any kind of clue, it’ll be worth it.”

No one likes it, but time is running out — _three days_ Louis had been tied there, they’re far behind and every passing minute might make them too late — and so they make the jump to Zayn’s flat. The place is a wreck, spellbooks and bottles of herbs and candles everywhere, but Zayn doesn’t bother apologizing for the mess.

“I was looking for something that might work,” he explains, shrugging. “It’s not like there’s going to be anything as explicit as ‘here’s a spell to break through the magic blockage of some unusually powerful humans,’ but I thought I’d give it a shot.” He nods at one book in particular, open to a page with a confusing set of overlapping runes and hieroglyphs. “Grab that, will you?”

In Zayn’s Seeing room, he directs Louis, Liam, and Niall to stand off to the side and grabs a jar of something dark crimson. “Cow’s blood,” he explains. “Not as potent as human, but easier to get.” He paints a recreation of the book page on the floor, weird shapes and words intersecting on the old wood. Next is a jar of clay, a dark gold material Zayn scoops out on his fingertips — “Sand from a wet desert,” he explains, “it’s an oxymoron, see.” — and he calls the others over, dotting quick runes on their hands.  

“How do you want us?” Niall asks, gesturing to the four spaces where he, Louis, Liam, and Harry sat the last time they were here with Zayn, doing extreme magic in a desperate situation.

Zayn chews on his lip in thought, then positions each of them on the points of a triangle within the design painted in blood. Then, just like last time, he takes a seat directly on the center of the runes, a conduit for the power they’ll be producing. Louis reaches out, lays his hands on Zayn’s shoulders; Niall takes Zayn’s left hand, Liam lays his hand on Zayn’s knee.

A deep breath, then Zayn chants something in a low, rolling timbre. For a moment, nothing happens. Then Zayn reaches with his empty hand, still chanting, and wipes the blue rune from his arm that was keeping his visions at bay.  

Pain lances through Louis like a lightning bolt, and he hears Niall gasp and knows they have to all be feeling the same thing. He opens his eyes but his vision is a rush of color, intangible like colored smoke, the pictures too fast to piece together. Louis’ head clangs like it’s being used as a bell, _thung,_ echoing and aching, _thung,_ and he knows that it has to be from the onslaught of images pouring into his brain. _Thung thung thung._

Liam moans, low and awful. In a distant part of Louis’ mind, he’s glad Zayn didn’t attempt this on his own, because the pain is currently diluted amongst the four of them. One person alone couldn’t survive this.

Zayn’s voice gets louder, shaky and shivery with pain, but as the pain and the unintelligible visions continue pounding against the walls of Louis’ head, things slowly become clearer. For a split second he can make out the edge of a mountain, familiar in the sunset, then a rocky cliffside overlooking a grey sea, then an abandoned flat with a conspicuous hole in the ceiling that he remembers jumping through

Then, suddenly, it all stops. Zayn makes a low noise, the pain melts away, and for a full five seconds there’s a clear vision in Louis’ head, one he knows the other three can see as well.

It’s a stone bench, bleached white from the sun and worn smooth with antiquity, the edge of it crumbled as nature slowly reclaims it.

As the vision fades away, Louis laughs helplessly, a choked, terrible noise.

“Of course,” he says.

“What? Did you recognize it?” Zayn asks, turning to stare at Louis.

He laughs again, and his throat hurts. “Yeah,” he says. “I know exactly where they are.”

 

* * *

 

_Elis, Greece | May 2016_

Elis is quiet, the tourists gone for the day. It’s dusk over the ancient city, the sunset painting the old white ruins orange-red.

Louis had tried to jump them straight to the remains of Hera’s temple, but something had pushed him away, like an invisible bubble encasing the old Olympian sanctuary. They’d landed, instead, near the river, the water swishing quietly. For a moment Louis is unsteady on his feet for an entirely different reason, crashing back two thousand years, to the sight of old, dramatic ships docked on the shores, to Roman soldiers training on the sands. To Harry, a green cloak wrapped around his shoulders, his toes in the water as he waits for Louis to come back to him.

The memory of Harry collapsing, limp and lifeless, onto this very sand is what makes the stiffness in Louis’ shoulders edge into something more anticipatory, like bracing before a blow. He’d promised himself, two millennia past, that he’d never let Harry go again. He isn’t going to break that promise now.

Niall lets out a breath. “You know, in all these years, you’ve never brought any of us here.”

That’s true; it never felt right, somehow. Elis is a city where millions of people lived at some point throughout time, and millions more have visited in the centuries since, tourists among the ruins, cameras around their necks, sunglasses glinting in the Grecian sunlight.

Somehow, it still feels like a secret between Louis and Harry.

“Well,” Louis says, knuckling at Niall’s arm. “You’re here now.”

“Could be under better circumstances,” Zayn jokes weakly, and reality returns to them. They’re too far from the sanctuary to hear or see anything specific, but there’s heavy magic in the air even all the way out here, and of course there was the barrier keeping them from appearing directly in the sanctuary acting as a pretty large tip-off about the cult’s presence.

For a split second, unfiltered anger flows through Louis like poison; this city is _his_ , his and Harry’s. This is where he fell in love, where he met the best soul who ever walked the earth. He learned how to live here, and he learned how to survive after he left here.

Elis is the beginning of Louis and Harry’s story. It’s _not_ going to be the end as well.

They creep towards the sanctuary, picking their way through the silent, ancient streets, the crumbling houses that Louis used to know. The old marketplace could be a ghost town, the paltry remains of a few old wooden stalls propped up against enduring stone walls, and then he can see the wide stone steps that lead to the sanctuary gate.

“We can’t just stroll up to the front door,” Liam points out.

“This way,” Louis says, relying on centuries-old memories to guide him towards the guardhouse to the north of the sanctuary. Back when Louis and Harry had lived here, that had been one of their favorite roofs to climb, an ideal vantage spot for people-watching or to start races across rooftops for bragging rights. The edge of the guardhouse aligns with the wall around the sanctuary, and they should be able to cross there without being seen.

However the guardhouse, like the rest of Elis, is crumbling, and there’s no straight path to the top like the one Harry and Louis used to take. They spend a long few minutes moving agonizingly slowly, wincing when they reach for hand or footholds and the stone breaks away, cracking against the cobblestone streets. Zayn lays a spell on the ground below them to soften the landing of the debris, and after that they can move more quickly, helping each other up until they’re standing on a sagging roof, and they can see directly over the walls into the sanctuary.

“Fuck,” Louis says, and his hands clench automatically. He feels his wings expand in anger (and hears Niall’s curse as he jumps out of the way), and he’s glad that they’re still far enough away that human eyes won’t be able to see them.

In the center of the ruins of Hera’s temple, between the fallen stone columns that had once worked to keep Louis out, in the grassy expanse where Hera’s throne used to rest, the humans have built a bonfire. It’s massive, at least twenty feet tall, and it’s bright green.

Hera won’t care that the rubble of what once was hers is on fire, but Louis _rages_ at the desecration of one of his favorite spots on the planet. It’s not sacred ground, not anymore, but it might as well be. Louis aches to _hit_ something, to put the hate racing through him to good use. He can see the tiny blurred outlines of a few people against the bright glow of the fire, and Louis feels himself putting little targets on each of them for ruining a place that should be monumentalized for all it gave to Louis.  

“Lou,” Liam says carefully, touching his arm, and common sense comes rushing back.

“We need a plan,” Niall says.

“Right,” Louis says shakily, then, more firmly, “Right. We can’t go in blind, and we might need help. Liam, you go to Jesy’s, tell her and Ed and Jade to round up everyone they can. We won’t need an army, but if there’s some kind of backup plan that the cult has already in place, we might need the numbers. Niall, you find Nick, I think he’s back in London. If they’ve got any demon-specific magic going on, he’ll be good to have around, and he should know where Harry is just in case.”

Niall and Liam both nod, dematerializing from view. Zayn asks, “Where do you want me?”

“We need to find a way through the barrier,” Louis says. “Remember last time, I could get through and we used the rune they carved on me and Harry to get the rest of you in.” He touches the inside of his elbow, where the faded scar of the hand inside an outline of fire still rests. “I get the feeling that the ward is going to be stronger here than it was those other times, and we have to be able to find a way in.”

Zayn rolls up his sleeves and Louis almost grins, a tiny part of him thrilled to finally be moving and reacting and _fighting back_. They jump across the small gap between the guardhouse roof and the sanctuary wall, then pick their way down the rough stone face of the wall until they’re back on solid ground. Louis leads the way and they move forward silently, using the long shadows of sunset to hide as they move from ruin to ruin. The long edge of the old stadium hides them for a while, and Louis can pick out the crackling sound of fire as they move closer, sliding into the deep gloom behind the Echo Stoa, an old covered walkway that used to lead to the stadium.

Behind Louis, Zayn hisses, “Lou, stop.” When Louis turns, he sees Zayn frozen midstep. He grimaces. “Found the edge of the ward.”

Louis frowns, and slinks back to Zayn’s side. He grabs Zayn’s wrist and tries to pull him forward, and he can feel the edge of that same bubble around the center of the sanctuary pushing him out, not letting him cross. When he drops Zayn’s hand, he slides past the barrier with no problem.

“So, the rune they put on me still works,” Louis says, exhaling. “That’s… good, right?”

“Maybe,” Zayn says, looking cautiously optimistic. “It might just be an oversight, and we can use the same method to break the ward like we have before.”

He pulls multiple small glass bottles out of his pockets, filled to the brim with different powders and liquids and inks. Zayn tries them all, one by one, drawing the rune onto his skin and lifting his hand to try to push through the barrier. Nothing works, none of the solutions he tries, and his brow furrows in frustration. Finally, he pulls a small silver knife from his pocket and unsheathes it, slicing quickly across his palm. He uses the blood to draw the rune once more, then lifts his hand, which still stops at the ward’s edge.

“Damn,” Zayn curses quietly, then mutters a spell under his breath to knit the skin of his palm back together. “I’m out of ideas.”

A stray thought hits Louis, and he’s desperate, so he’s willing to try anything. “Do mine,” he says, offering his palm to Zayn. He only hesitates for a moment before bringing the knife across Louis’ palm, white blood spilling to the surface of his skin. Zayn murmurs an apology and dips his fingers into the blood, drawing the picture of the hand encased by fire.

He still can’t get through the barrier.

“Shit,” Louis says.

A footstep crunches behind them and they whirl around, only to find Niall and Liam creeping slowly up to their hiding spot.

“Ed’s rounding up reinforcements,” Liam fills them in.

“So is Nick,” Niall nods. “And I sent off messages to Steve and your sisters.” Liam clears his throat, and Niall goes pink. “And Bressie.”

Louis files away several teasing jokes he’s dying to throw out — he’ll be able to use them later, he’s sure of it, because _nothing is going to happen to any of them,_ not today, not ever — and nods. “Okay. Zayn’s tried a bunch of different ways to break through the ward, but he can’t figure it out. I can get through, though, and I’m going to move closer, see what I can scout out.”

“Louis,” Liam says, sounding pained. “Is that a good idea?”

“Is any of this a good idea?” Louis shoots back. “We’ve been flying blind for months, and this is no different.”

Liam makes a face at that, but Niall says, “We’ll at least move to where we can see and hear a little better.”

“Niall’s right,” Zayn nods. “We can’t get in yet, but maybe we can figure out a way to help from the outside if you need it.”

Louis breathes out slowly, says, “Okay,” and tries to shoot them a grin. This is it, and he’s not surprised at all that this is what it has come down to — it’s always been Louis’ duty to watch out for Harry, all the way back to when his blood used to run red instead of black, when he still went by Herakleitos and his whole world was encompassed by the borders of Greece and the edges of the sea.

It would be wrong, Louis thinks, to hand over that responsibility to someone else now, when it might be needed most.

Louis creeps through the barrier once more, flitting quickly from shadow to shadow, watching the outlines of the cult members grow clearer as he approaches. Their voices are still covered up by the roar of the giant bonfire, but he can see enough to make out six or seven people, a bubbling cauldron of something that Louis can tell is bad news, even from here. There’s a small stand with a book lying open on top of it, and Louis would bet his left wing that it’s another copy of the big black spellbook that has haunted them now for months, _Carminibus Cinis._

Louis keeps inching forward. He’s now behind the metroon, the old temple dedicated to Demeter; smaller than Hera’s and directly behind hers as well, it’s diminutive and almost hidden away, a perfect vantage point. He can see a few more details from this close, and for the first time voices are clear enough that he can make out actual words. They seem to be excited, which is to be expected — if the nonsense about a green fire really _was_ a prophecy, then this is something they’ve been looking forward to for a long, long time — but they aren’t discussing anything of importance. They’ve got hoods over their faces but they’re deferring to one person in particular, who seems to be giving orders: Caroline, Louis guarantees it. She directs them toward the cauldron to check the contents, to make sure the spellbook is still open to the correct page, to toss more wood soaked in accelerant on the fire.

“And someone needs to check on our guest,” she says lastly, and Louis can’t even see her face but he can imagine the smirk there as though she’s standing right in front of him. Louis follows her vague line of sight and sees-

Oh, Hell. _Harry._

He’s slumped against one of the columns of Hera’s temple, chin dropped against his chest. He could be sleeping, except the way his limbs are sprawled out unnaturally, and of course except even Harry isn’t trusting enough to sleep amongst enemies. Louis hears a hurt sound come from the back of his own throat, and he moves towards the edge of the building closest to Harry so he can get a better look. There’s a dried line of black blood running from Harry’s temple, but he looks otherwise unharmed. He doesn’t seem to be tied to anything, or shackled in any way; either the cult is confident he won’t run away, or they have some reason to believe he _can’t._  

It’s a small mistake that Louis makes, but a mistake nonetheless; the cult member Caroline sent to check on Harry leans over him, and does something that makes Harry give a full-body twitch. Louis, unconsciously, grips the stone edge of the old temple he’s using as a hiding place, and squeezes hard enough that part of the old wall crumbles away in his hands.

Caroline turns to Louis immediately at the sound of collapsing rock, her head snapping towards him almost unnaturally fast. She raises her hands and grabs the edges of her hood, pushing it backward so Louis can see her face. She’s smiling widely, and doesn’t seem worried at all that Louis has found them.

“Well, our other guest of honor has finally arrived!” she says, beaming in a way that makes Louis’ stomach churn. “I think that means we should wake up dear Harry, don’t you, Louis?”

She snaps her fingers and, suddenly, Harry’s eyes flash open. They’re black, demonic black, and Louis doesn’t know if Harry is so scared he can’t control it, can’t force the glamour back in so his eyes are green once more, or maybe he’s past the point of caring. He gets slowly to his feet, his shoulders held oddly, tension shot through his muscles. Caroline watches with a wide smile as Harry makes an about-face and looks right at Louis, who stands to meet him.

Harry must have a plan, Louis thinks with building excitement; his expression hasn’t changed a bit, stuck in a blank mask, but he’s marching towards Louis like it’s his life purpose, and Louis has never wanted so badly to touch him, to make sure he’s okay.

“Harry,” Louis breathes out, not embarrassed by the need that bleeds into the one word.

Harry stops in front of Louis, tilts his head a little to the left, and stares at Louis for a long second. It’s strange how the demon black makes his eyes look fathomless, emotionless, like the humanity has been entirely stripped away.

“You’re okay, right?” Louis asks in a rush. “Anything hurting? We could use your help, but if you need to sit the fight out, there are reinforcements coming.”

Harry doesn’t answer, just raises a hand. Louis leans toward it, wanting to feel Harry’s palm against his cheek, reassuring and sweet even here.

But instead of that, Harry swings his arm out wide and crashes his fist into the side of Louis’ head. Louis falls to his knees, stunned, and just before his vision goes black he sees Harry standing over him, still completely devoid of emotion.

Louis takes a last gasp, and the world fades from view.

 

* * *

 

_London, England | 1734_

“I’ve just realized,” Harry says. The cool night air makes his breath fog; the stars are hard edges of light overhead. “We’re going to be together forever, aren’t we?”

Louis blows out his own exhale, a small burst of warmth. He rolls his head to look at Harry, who’s laid beside him on the rooftop of this old factory. The world is quiet. It won’t always be this way, but for right now, it is.

“Yes,” he says. “’Til the stars fall from the sky.”

Harry hums a happy noise, like he likes the bit of poetry.

It’s not poetry; it’s the truth. They’re facing down eternity and holding hands the entire way — and where Harry goes, Louis will follow. It’s always been that way, and it always will. 

 

* * *

 

_Elis, Greece | May 2016_

Louis comes to full consciousness with his wrists bound by blessed ropes, and since that's the second time that's happened in as many hours he's just a _little_ pissed.

And, because he’s a _little_ pissed, he wakes up howling, tugging futilely but cruelly at the bindings, ignoring the darting sparks of pain as they rocket up his arms. His wings flare uselessly behind him, his sigils glow angrily on his chest.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Caroline tuts, wagging a finger at Louis like he's a naughty schoolchild. “Can't have that.” She waves her hand almost airily but a spell knocks hard into Louis’ stomach, and he hunches over, winded.

Rage filters Louis’ vision red, but he keeps the presence of mind to take a surreptitious look around while he's still bent over, ostensibly catching his breath. Things have changed while Louis was out, clearly; he's been moved to the center of the ruins close to the fire, which has been banked enough that the flames are only about five feet high now, instead of the roaring inferno they were before. (A beacon, Louis thinks. They were calling him here in all the most obvious ways, and he fell for it.) The cult members are bustling about almost manically, carrying jars of ingredients and flipping frantically through their spellbook, drawing runes all around with chalk and jars of red liquid that Louis really hopes is just animal blood.

But the biggest change is that they now have an audience, and Louis feels dozens of eyes pinned on him like he's a butterfly under a microscope.

For a second, Louis’ stomach flips because he thinks that Zayn must've found a way to break the wards, but then he realizes if that were the case, he'd have woken to fighting and bloodshed instead of a silent, distant crowd. No, instead it seems like the wards have been drawn in closer than they were before, letting the outsiders near enough to see exactly what's happening, but not close enough to help.

“Oh,” Caroline says delightedly, “I can see the little gears turning in your old head. This is going to be _so_ much fun.”

Louis doesn't answer. Just past Caroline’s head is the last remains of the setting sun, pale orange fingers streaked through the sky. Also there over her shoulder is Liam, looking pale and worried, his sword sharp and glinting in his hands. Beside him are Ed, Jesy, Jade, Leigh-Anne, and about thirty more of the guardian angels under Louis’ guidance, neatly spaced in regimented lines. Louis’ stomach twinges like he's been hit again when he sees Lottie there at the front of the group, clutching tightly at Fizzy’s hand, looking partly terrified and partly murderous that someone has stolen her brother.

He turns and looks the other way, directly east, and sees a similar tableau with a very different crowd. Nick and Niall stand at the front of a group of demons, and Louis recognizes a few from Harry's various missions over the years. They aren't worried about assembling into neat lines; they're ranged around the curved edge of the ward, pressing as close as they can. They, too, look murderous, which seems to be a common theme here.

In the spaces between the angel army and the demon horde, other friends and allies fill the gaps. Steve is there next to Zayn, both of them kneeling in the sun-baked dirt and clearly scrambling to find something to break through the wards. Bressie and a few of his kinsman stand not far from Niall, waiting silently with hard eyes, and Amy and Eoghan are with them. The werewolves from Manitoba are on the north edge of the circle, eyes flashing as they pace in agitation, and the pixies from Bangkok are flitting about next to Perrie and her family, golden in the sunset and imperious as ever.

“They’re going to break the wards,” is the first thing Louis says. He doesn’t try to be haughty or amused; he’s too tired for that, and he’s just realized that he hadn’t spotted Harry in his sweep of the makeshift battlefield, which has his nerves twisted up in knots.

Caroline, though, isn’t worried about irritating anyone into homicide, and she throws her head back and laughs without a care. “That’s cute,” she says, looking at Louis like she wants to pinch his cheek. “They can’t get in, we’ve been setting up these wards for years. Everyone who is supposed to be in here has the key, and everyone else can stay out until we’re finished.”

“The key,” Louis repeats. “You mean the symbol you carved into my arm? They know that, it won’t take long for one of them to do the same thing to themselves.”

Caroline shrugs. “They can try. It takes a blessed knife” — Zayn has one of those, Louis reminds himself, that’s not a dealbreaker — “and, in any case, that rune is just half of it.”

She steps forward and pushes up the sleeve of Louis’ shirt, dirty and wrinkled from his time spent unconscious. It’s his left arm, this time, rather than his right arm where he knows the rune was cut. Caroline presses a thumb at the crook of Louis’ inner elbow and something flashes under Louis’ skin.

“We let you know about the first rune on purpose,” Caroline says, clearly reveling in the brilliance of their plan. “You’d spend all your time scrambling to figure out what it means and what it’s used for,” Louis definitely does _not_ flush, thinking about the hours Steve and Zayn spent pouring over ancient books, looking for any hint of the symbol, “when, in reality, it’s just a simple anti-ward spell. It’s the key that lets you in. This one,” she digs her thumb into Louis’ arm again, and this time it hurts, the pain sharp as the rune materializes and stays, “is the key that keeps everyone else _out_.”

The hidden rune, like most ward/anti-ward coupled runes, is the exact opposite of the one Louis has known about for months. Instead of a cupped hand inside an outline of fire, this one is a direct opposite, a small flame being held in a cupped hand. It’s mind-meltingly simple, maddeningly so.

“They’re still going to figure it out,” Louis says through gritted teeth. He has faith in his friends; they’ll piece it together.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Caroline says, pouting at him like he’s being thick on purpose. “That’s adorable. But no, they won’t. We let you see this one,” she says, tapping at the first rune, the one that turned into a scar within hours of leaving that shoddy little basement in Yorkshire all those months ago, “just to get you invested in the mystery. We’re not going to keep using the same tired trick for our grand finale.”

Louis feels, for not the first time ever, like the rug has been pulled out from under him in rather embarrassing style. He’d made out this cult in his head to be some kind of assemblage of super geniuses with extreme magical talents, when in reality they’d just twisted simple spells to fit their needs.

They’d overestimated the humans, and now they were caught in a basic — but strong — trap.

“You don’t look very impressed,” Caroline says. She bends a little, so that she and Louis are eye-level. It’s meant to look condescending, Louis thinks, but it mostly serves to remind him that she’s so _small._ He’d built her up in his head, too, giving her Morgana-level witchiness and the tactical brilliance of Sun Tzu, but she’s so _ordinary._

Louis doesn’t have his Vision — blessed ropes sap the strongest powers first, and that’s definitely Louis’ strength — but he almost doesn’t need it; he can imagine her life and the path that led her here almost without trying. She’s pretty, but not remarkably so; she dresses like she’s waiting for a fashion house to scoop her up off the street, makeup immaculate and her heels pristine even in the dirt of the ruins. She probably expected to use her looks to get anything she wanted and never bothered developing the charm she’d need if that didn’t work; eventually, when that failed, she’d get angry, and she’d turn to darker means. A cult that specialized in using magic to rid the world of those inborn with immortality sounds like exactly the sort of thing she’d jump headfirst into — devoting her life to the destruction of beings who were given something that she wasn’t.

And Louis’ power might be sapped, nearly drained, at this point, but he doesn’t need much to see the faint silver glow in the center of her chest, her aura peeking out. It’s not even full, harsh grey, like the souls of the truly evil; in some way, she’s convinced herself that killing immortals is the right thing to do. She probably considers herself a blessing to humanity.

But, ah, pride — narcissism is still a sin, and she’s full of it.

“No,” he says finally, wearily. “No, I’m not impressed.”

“Well,” Caroline pouts, “I can remedy that. You might not like our little trick with the runes, but that’s not the part of the plan we’ve spent _ages_ preparing for.”

She snaps her fingers and footsteps start up right behind Louis, making him freeze; he honestly hadn’t noticed anyone was there, his attention caught by the entire rest of the scene around him, including the two opposing armies watching each other like they’re just waiting for the inevitable fight to begin. The footsteps are rhythmic, like the person is thinking _step left-pause-step right-pause_ as they walk. It’s odd, and Louis frowns until the person takes enough of those slow, measured steps to enter the edge of Louis’ field of vision.

The blackness of Harry’s eyes strips the breath out of Louis in a rush, and as though the space needs to be filled he’s hit with the memory of Harry standing in front of him, his arm rushing towards Louis just before he was knocked unconscious. Louis would think it was some kind of magic clone, or another demon using the old trick of changing itself into the thing Louis most desires, but Louis knows that’s not what this is. It’s really Harry; his body, at least, if not his mind.

He didn’t recognize the footsteps because they’re different, strange; Harry normally walks like a deer about to bolt, but now his hips swing leisurely from side to side, like a calculated attack to be as sinuous and smooth as possible.

“What did you do to him?” Louis asks shakily. Harry comes to a stop next to Caroline and stares at him, eyes blank and completely without recognition. Harry has _never_ looked like that, not at Louis; even that very first time their eyes met, just a couple hundred yards from this exact spot, Harry had looked at Louis like they were already integral parts of each other’s lives. Even the first time Harry’s eyes went black, Louis never doubted there was still a soul inside him.

Now, he’s not so sure.

“Told you you’d be impressed,” Caroline laughs, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “It’s a little something our group has been working on for, oh, the past couple of centuries. We had to perfect it before we could put the rest of the plan in motion, but I think we got there, in the end.”

“What,” Louis grits out, “did you _do.”_

“Not much,” Caroline says. “We just stripped out that little leftover part of him that was still human.”

It isn’t until Caroline takes a step back, eyebrows raised like she’s vaguely impressed, that Louis realizes he’s pulling so hard against the ropes around his wrists that the stone columns he’s been tied to are creaking. His sigils are glowing again, and he can feel the sibilant slide of Enochian slipping out of his mouth, his brain short-circuiting and losing his grasp on English for a moment. Still, he knows his threats have been clear enough even through the language barrier.

And, judging from the way the other cult members slow and glance nervously towards the edges of the ward, the groups waiting for their opening to attack aren’t happy either, even if they can’t hear what’s going on.

Harry still stands there, blithely, without a single hint of emotion on his face. He’s not in his glamour, Louis notices for the first time; he’d been so preoccupied by the utter lack of expression that he hadn’t noticed the grey-smoke cast of his skin, the fire winding its way visibly through his veins, the sharp black claws on his hands. His diamond crown glints in the setting sunlight. His necklace is missing; someone must’ve taken it, and usually Harry would just cast a glamour himself until he could make another charm, just to keep the veneer of humanity on himself.

Apparently, in this state, he doesn’t care about that.

He looks dangerous. Before, even in his true Form, there had always been a sense of _Harry_ in him; like this, he could be any demon hellbent and hellbound on strife. It’s only that miserable tugging in Louis’ stomach that tells him this is _his_ demon, that wants him to pull Harry close even when he _knows_ that’s a bad idea.

If Harry’s humanity is gone — and there’s no way for Louis to know if Caroline is telling the truth, not with his powers at the bare minimum — then Harry is operating entirely on instinct. He’ll be inclined to chaos and destruction, and he’ll choose the path of most resistance at every juncture.

“Harry,” he tries, because he can’t _not._ “Harry, baby.”

Caroline laughs, high and tinkling, and retakes that step forward as though Louis is back to being no more frightening than a hissing kitten. “I told you, he’s not in there.” She taps at Harry’s chest, and Louis half expects him to rattle like a nearly-empty tin, the husk of his black soul shriveled up without his humanity to balance it.

Harry still stares at Louis, eyes blank, but the corner of his lips curls, just barely, into a smirk.

“Haz,” Louis says again. His voice wobbles. “ _Harry.”_

“Ooh, sweetheart. It’s gone,” Caroline says sadly. “This isn’t Disney, he can’t get it back with a kiss.” She steps closer to Louis again, her head bowed like she and Louis are sharing gossip. “Listen, I’m with you, I think it’s a bit far. He was precious before, wasn’t he? All dimples and sparkly eyes. But I sort of like him like this, too.” She turns to give Harry an appraising look. “He’s got a bit of animal magnetism now, doesn’t he? Because that’s what he is, Louis.” Her eyes go hard. “An animal. Nothing to temper him, to keep from killing us all.”

“So why isn’t he?” Louis asks roughly. “What’s stopping him? Maybe your trick didn’t work.”

“Well,” Caroline allows, “I suppose he’s not _completely_ in control of himself right now. That would be dangerous.” She smiles, her teeth sharp. “He’ll get to the slaughtering when he’s told.”

A growl rumbles low in Louis’ chest, but she still doesn’t look worried.

“Anyway,” Caroline says, still speaking into Louis’ ear. “We’ll just keep this between us, but this whole _thing_ isn’t really my scene. These losers,” she nods toward the other cult members, who have resumed their frantic preparations, “they have all these issues with religion, with angels and demons in particular. I don’t really care about that. All I want is the _power.”_ She grins, and leans back. “When immortals are gone, there will be a vacuum, and I’m ready to step in.”

“You can’t kill every immortal from inside a locked ward,” Louis says. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Oh, no, honey, that’s not what this is,” Caroline says. “No, _we’re_ not starting this war. _He_ is.” She gestures to Harry, still smirking silently behind her.

“Really?” Louis asks, rolling his eyes. “He can’t really take out thousands of immortal beings from in here either.”

“He doesn’t need to take out thousands of them,” Caroline says lightly. “Just one.” And then her grin widens. “Just you.”

Louis sways a bit, stunned. “He won’t,” he grits out, but it’s unconvincing, and Caroline isn’t deterred.

“He will,” she says. “And when he does, we’ll finally have the war that both sides so _desperately_ want,” she looks pointedly at the demons outside the wards, who are, just as she says, nearly frothing with the need to attack someone. On the other end, the angels don’t look much further from violence, hands uneasy on the hilts of their swords. “See?” she asks, another tinkling laugh. “We don’t have to kill anyone. You’re going to do it to yourselves.”

“It’s not going to work.”

“It is,” she says, just as surely. “Of course, it wouldn’t be possible without you two.”

“You’re really doing this?” Louis snarls, twisting his hands and fighting back the instinct to stop moving, to cause less pain for himself every time the ropes chafe his skin. “The classic villain schtick of explaining your evil plan, you’re really doing this?”

“Genius needs an audience, darling,” Caroline says. “And, really, can we call this _evil?_ Like I said, I’m not fully on board the _kill them all_ train, but I see where they’re coming from.” She waves idly at the other cultists. “You lot have been in charge forever and you’re so busy in your petty little squabbles that the world has gone to shit.”

Louis coughs a harsh laugh. “That’s humanity’s doing, I believe.”

Caroline makes an unimpressed noise. “I don’t really care. Back to the brilliance of this plan — though, I can’t take all of the credit, I will admit. These guys have been revising this plan for _centuries,_ tweaking the details, getting the formulas right.” She reaches out and starts to undo the buttons of Louis’ shirt, as idly as if it was second nature. “Whenever they had a breakthrough, they’d kidnap some immortals and try out the new methods. We found some interesting information that way.”

She looks pointedly down at Louis’ bare chest, and he looks down too.

Oh.

“ _You_ did this?” he snaps, gesturing a little at the twisting, ropey burn scar across his stomach and up his ribs, the one meant to match Harry’s, the one given to him by-

By a wild-eyed fanatic with a blue fire in a glass jar.

Mother _fucker._

“Well,” Caroline shrugs, “ _I_ didn’t, obviously. My great-great-great-and so on and so forth granddad did. That’s how I found this group, actually.” She smiles winningly. “I’m a legacy.”

“So you set up a trap, a- whatever, a plan for me and Harry,” Louis says through his teeth, “and your ancestor tested it out _on me and Harry?”_

“I know, right? Irony,” Caroline laughs airily. “Anyway, it had to be you two.”

“Yeah, you said that earlier,” Louis says. Behind Caroline, the other cultists look to be mostly finished with their preparations; they’re standing around the fire, tossing herbs and bits of liquid into the flames, the smoke changing color with each new addition, even though the flame color is a deep, enduring green. Ritual, Louis thinks scathingly; there always has to be a ritual. “Why us two?”

“Ah, see, you’ve been the big thorn in our sides for years,” Caroline says. “Every time we tried to do this without you, to set up a scene to look like an angel attacked a demon, or vice versa, you two were _always there._ For _centuries._ You’re friendly with a couple other demons, sure, and little Harry,” she reaches over and clasps his shoulder, as though he’s not six inches taller and two thousand years older than her, “gets along with a couple of angels, but you’re not actually close with them. However,” her eyes tighten. “You two being, well, _you two_ meant that there was an information exchange that wasn’t there before. Demons and angels were getting along for the first time ever, and it was because you two decided to go against your natures and shack up.”

“And so, what, you think framing Harry as my murderer is going to rectify that?” Louis sneers. His arms are aching, and Harry’s still just _standing there,_ Caroline’s hand draped on his shoulder, watching Louis with that infuriating little smirk on his face. “With all these witnesses, you don’t think a single one of them is going to question Harry _not_ murdering me for thousands of years but killing me the moment you show up? Really?”

“Maybe some of them will pause long enough to think about it,” Caroline shrugs, “but we’ll be long gone. And, besides, it’s not as though angry mobs are the best at rational decisions. Demons don’t trust angels, and angels don’t trust demons. You know that.” She meets his eyes meaningfully, then looks to her left, directly at Liam, as though she’d heard every word of Liam’s earlier diatribe against Harry.

Louis’ hands tighten into fists. “Hell, just- if you’re going to do something, _do it,”_ he growls.

“Have to wait for them to finish,” Caroline says, thumbing over her shoulder where the cultists are chanting in low, rhythmic Latin. “Not long now, though, don’t worry. I’m honestly surprised you don’t know what’s happening already, since you figured out the bit with the copper and what our purpose is.”

“Conquering,” Louis says, just to have something to say. “The spellbook said conquering through fire.”

“Ah, yes, but that was always for dramatic effect more than anything else,” Caroline tells him. “We like our theatrics and, of course, it made it _so_ easy to whip up a little false prophecy to worry you.” Louis almost groans at that — he _knew_ there was no way a dinky little cult with no connections actually had access to a real prophet, a real prophecy. His despair at being at this cult’s mercy is growing by the minute. “But ‘conquering’ isn’t really the right word. What we’re doing is _cleansing.”_

“Cleansing by fire,” Louis repeats.

“Always a good way to get rid of pests, or so I’ve heard,” Caroline agrees. “Did you think it was a coincidence that fire has followed you since the moment you met Harry?” She squeezes Harry’s shoulders and his eyes flash; if Louis hadn’t been watching at that exact moment he would’ve missed it entirely, because a split second later it’s back to blank blackness. At Louis’ confused look, she laughs. “Oh, honestly, this isn’t that hard. You and Harry have matching _burn_ scars.”

“He was burned as a child, that had nothing to do with you,” Louis mutters, working his wrists against the ropes again. The chanting is getting louder behind Caroline and Harry, and he’s stalled as long as he can. He has to _go,_ and derail this catastrophe before it begins.

“Did it not?” Caroline asks airily. “His mother never told him the real story, so I suppose you can’t be blamed for being ignorant. Harry didn’t trip and fall into a fire pit, he was _held_ there. He barely survived,” she patted Harry’s hand in a faux show of comfort. “And it _wrecked_ his immune system, made it so easy for an illness to just sneak in and-“

Her hand clenches in Harry’s shoulder; he doesn’t flinch, but Louis does. “Stop it,” he orders.

“And it’s not even just you two!” Caroline laughs. She has to speak loudly to be heard over the chanting now, and she takes a step back so that, for the first time, Harry is the closest one to Louis. “Your little guardian angel protégé was a _firefighter,_ who died in a house fire he wasn’t supposed to be in. Your prophet was supposed to be burned at the stake and miraculously escaped when a spell backfired. And the Irish one, the demigod, did he never tell you about how, exactly, he lost the love of his life?”

No, Niall never talked about Caer, or how she died, but he knows Niall’s greatest fear, the one he’s never explained, is-

“Fire,” Louis whispers.

“I’ll admit, burning down his ancestral home was going a little overboard,” Caroline says, inspecting her nails, “but we _really_ got into the theme of it.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Louis growls, remembering the emotion swimming in Niall’s eyes that night, so long ago.

“Not if Harry kills you first,” Caroline grins. “Speaking of.” She snaps her fingers and Harry’s shoulders straighten. He takes a step towards Louis, still caught in that sinuous roll of hips that makes him look like a predator. Caroline continues, “You two are the strongest link between Heaven and Hell. You have to be the link that breaks, or all this is for naught.”

“Harry,” Louis begs, twisting in his bindings. Harry stands in front of him, impassive, and reaches out. “Harry, stop, you can’t _do_ this-“

“Oh, have I not gotten to this part yet?” Caroline laughs delightedly. “It’s my favorite part of this whole finale. See, Harry is going to kill you,” and it’s like she timed it, because Harry’s hand slides past Louis’ shoulder, gripping at what looks like thin air, and unsheathes-

“And he’s going to do it with your own sword.”

“Shit, shit,” Louis says, but he can’t move, he can’t run away, and he can _feel_ Harry’s hand closing around the sword strapped across his back, always there but hidden out of sight. In one long swing it slides loose of the scabbard, dark and sparkling against the evening light, firelight dancing along its edges. The real Harry would have looked flustered with a weapon in his hands, or even playfully intimidating; this Harry looks coolly confident, adjusting his grip.

“That was one of our trials,” Caroline explains. “We had to see if the rumors about angels being killed by their own swords were true. Lucky for us, it is!” She grins widely, and in the deepening shadows of twilight she looks very nearly unhinged.

“Harry, Haz,” Louis pleads, his voice shaking. There’s another flash in Harry’s eyes but it must’ve just been firelight, because Harry doesn’t stop curling and uncurling his hands comfortably against the grip of the blade.

“He’s not going to listen to you.” Caroline says it with relish, like she’s laying down the final card in a masterful round of poker, like calling a checkmate in a long game of chess. “We have a deal, see. He waited until you were asleep, and then he found us and struck a deal — his life and his loyalty in exchange for your safety.”

The words twist like poison in Louis’ limbs. “No.”

“Oh, yes,” Caroline smiles. “The humans here are blood bound not to harm you, it was in the deal we struck. But Harry, bless him,” she says, almost fondly, “didn’t think to keep himself out of the deal. He was probably thinking he’d _never_ hurt you, that the possibility of it was never a risk. But, of course, it was only that little bit of humanity we destroyed that kept him from attacking you on sight. He was the one who knocked you out, and who tied you up.”

Louis’ eyes flick down and notice, for the first time, that Harry’s hands are burned raw across the palms from blessed ropes, explaining why he keeps adjusting his grip on the sword.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Caroline murmurs. The chanting behind her has grown to a fever pitch, and the groups outside the wards are frantic in their movements too, pacing and threatening, muffled shouting through the thick ward, but Louis can still hear every word she says. “We’ve been watching you a long time, Louis, and I _know_ you. You hate yourself for letting him sacrifice any part of his happiness to be with you, and you hate that his soul is black because of you. And now, he’s doing it again, offering himself up in exchange for you, and you don’t even think you’re worth it.”

Harry finally settles on a grip around the sword and, slowly, lifts it over his head. Both hands are around the grip, shaking with the weight of it as his arms strain to wait for the command, braced for the blow.

“How do you think he’s going to feel if he snaps out of it?” Caroline taunts. “We didn’t _completely_ remove his humanity for that exact reason, because if he ever regained it he’d have to remember what he did to you. Do you think he’ll beg for mercy, an early death? Or will he decide that he was never meant for goodness and kindness in the first place, give in to those instincts he’s suppressed for so long?”

Louis can, faintly, hear Liam’s voice shouting outside the ward, too faint to hear the exact syllables. Louis looks: Niall is pounding against the ward like it’s a window, face red and blotchy. Zayn is throwing handfuls of powder at the barrier, eyes bright with fear. They’re not going to make it past the barrier in time; this is happening.

Harry’s going to start a war.

Harry himself, still standing over Louis and completely expressionless, shifts forward. A single bead of sweat rolls along his eyebrow, drips off his nose.

“Harry,” Louis says, and it comes out broken. Wrecked. He has no plan, and he has no hope, except that maybe Harry can escape somehow in the confusion that’s going to follow the next few seconds. If nothing else comes out of this, he hopes Harry’s self-sacrifice isn’t in vain. “My Harry. _Chrysé mou_ ,” he almost laughs, but it chokes itself into being a sob instead. “I got to have you through two millennia, and I thought I’d get to have a few more, but I guess we’re out of time.”

Harry swallows, his arms shaking harder, but his eyes are still devoid of anything Louis recognizes.

“If- if you do remember this later,” Louis smiles softly up at him, vision blurry with tears, “remember that I’ve loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you, and I love you even now, you great self-sacrificing idiot. Remember that I don’t blame you, and neither do the boys. None of this is your fault.”

Something flickers in Harry’s eyes, Louis is sure of it this time. The black, for just a moment, is wide green.

“I love you, my golden one,” Louis murmurs, tipping his head back to give Harry a clean swing, his throat clogged with tears. “You-” This time he does laugh, soft and sad and caught in the rips of his aching throat. “You made eternity wonderful.”

He struggles to keep his eyes open, pure animal fear making it difficult to stare up at Harry through his eyelashes and wait for the killing blow. The chanting in the background is like the roar of the ocean, inescapable and heavy, and another drip of sweat trails down Harry’s arm, following the curve of the muscle. Louis can’t see the sword where it’s hidden behind Harry’s back, but he can see Harry’s trembling wrists, his jittering fingers.

“Well?” Caroline asks, and if she didn’t look so enthralled she’d almost sound bored. “Go on.”

Harry’s arms hitch higher, and he adjusts his grip one more time. His muscles tense, and Louis’ eyes squeeze shut before he can stop himself.

“What are you doing?” Caroline laughs, and Louis opens his eyes again. Harry’s eyes aren’t the only part of him flickering anymore; his whole body flashes, for a second, back to peach skin and long brunette curls, before his true Form shows once more. “You can’t fight this,” Caroline reminds him. “You can’t fight your own nature.”

Harry stares down at Louis. His eyes flash; there's recognition there. There's fear.

“If I have to die here, today,” Louis whispers, “I’m glad I can be with you.”

Another flicker — and this time, it's anger. Rage cooled over like old magma, and Louis suppresses a shiver.

But then it’s gone, emotions wiped, blank blank blank, and his arms start the motion of bringing the sword over his head.

  
  
  


It unfolds in a split second that lasts an eternity:

the sword whistles through the air.

Louis braces, braces, squeezes his eyes shut, _braces_ ;

waits, expecting a jolt of horrible pain before the swift nothingness.

_Pain._

But not what he thought, he _thought_ there would be nothingness, he thought there would be nothing but the void, he thought death wouldn't _hurt_ this much;

He _gasps_.

His sword is buried in his arm, like his holy bones are a weapon rack, a sheath. _Burns,_ it burns, red hot heat and _pain_ rocketing from the inside of Louis’ elbow to his shoulder to his neck to his clenched jaw to his aching head.

A wrenching, tearing pain that isn't much like the burning, rocketing pain of before, though equally awful; there's a tugging and the sword isn't in Louis’ arm anymore.

Louis eyes open;

Harry lifts the sword above his head again — did he _miss?_

He won't miss this time. His eyes flash;

the sword whistles.

Louis braces, braces, braces; he prepares to attempt to hurl himself sideways.

This _swish_ through the air stops — there's a sickening _thud_ of metal against skin.

Not Louis’ skin.

Harry _howls._

“No!” Caroline shrieks.

The eternity wrapped in a split second ends, and chaos pours in.

  
  
  


Harry has cut through their runes, both of them, matching shallow lines on the insides of their elbows; sliced the tip of Louis’ deadly sword through the hands cupping the flames, the hidden symbol meant to lock everyone else out.

It's pandemonium.

The doors are unlocked now, the ward walls have come crashing down. Caroline is screeching, and her cult is trampling over themselves in panic. A retreat with no exits; Louis was right, they aren't the most extensive planners, despite their bravado. Confident in their plan, so confident they didn't expect resistance. A war was inevitable, they probably thought. Just light a spark and hold it near the dynamite, the rest is nature.

And maybe it _was_ inevitable. Inevitable in the same way the Titanic was unsinkable, the way Achilles was unbeatable. Inevitable, a sure thing, as sure as angels and demons could never get along.

Funny how impossibilities seem to not be so impossible after all.

The hordes are pouring in; angels and demons and demigods and mythical creatures, a blur of sounds, a blur of color. Metal rings against metal. Somewhere close, someone laughs, wild and victorious. It sounds like Niall.

Louis is overwhelmed, the barrier bursting not unlike a snap of bubblegum, surprising in the intensity of the _pop._ Still, something beckons him, urgent; an instinct.

_Get down._

Louis doesn't hesitate — he reaches up best he can with his wrists still rope-bound and yanks Harry down to sprawl gracelessly on the ground.

Less than a blink passes, and Caroline has an arrow buried in her shoulder.

Louis turns and Leigh-Anne nods at him, lowering a brilliantly sky blue bow to her side, a quiver of glowing gold arrows strapped to her back. She’ll have to go; the Seven will want a report back, but she must’ve wanted to show her support. Louis nods back. She disappears.

The arrow disintegrates, but the hole in Caroline’s shoulder does not. She staggers, her palm pressing hard on the wound, blood running through her fingers, but her sneer returns.

“Is that it?” she bellows, rage cracking through her words. Her eyes are fixed on Louis and Harry, still the targets even as a battle rages around her. “Come on!”

Harry staggers to his feet. Louis can see the shake in his legs, exhaustion and fear, and he can't imagine the energy it would take to throw off the kind of spell he just broke. His shoulders heave with gasping breaths. Louis sword still dangles from one of his hands, still burned from the ropes he tied Louis up with. His eyes are green: hard-edged, like a weapon made of jade.

“Haz,” Louis murmurs. He tugs helplessly on his bindings, but there's nothing he can do. “Don't.”

Harry stops to meet Louis’ pleading gaze for a moment, but his thoughts are so clear he might as well have said them aloud.

 _Let me do this. I_ need _to do this._

He takes a shaky step forward. Another. One more, but that's all he can manage; he buckles.  

Falls to his knees, his head bowed.

Caroline laughs, harsh and heavy.

“Well, I suppose your life is decent consolation prize, since I think the unimaginable power is out of the picture now.”

She lifts the hand not sheltering her arrow wound, and a little green flame crackles in her cupped palm.

“Goodbye, you unnatural, troublesome _freaks_.” Her lip curls unattractively. “Hope the eternal separation of the afterlife is enough punishment for you.”

The fire in her palm arcs towards Harry, but never hits its target. There's a gasp, a flame extinguished, and a soft _thud_ as Caroline topples anticlimactically to the ground in an ungainly heap.

Liam's sword is stuck through her back, precisely between two ribs and straight through her sin-black heart.

She's dead. It's over.

Louis chokes out a laugh that is sort of grateful and sort of completely _drained_ , and nods at Liam in thanks when their eyes meet. Liam nods back, then drops to his knees in front of Harry’s slumped form.

“Harry,” Liam starts, hesitant. He sets his hands carefully on Harry’s shoulders, passing it off as a comforting gesture even though they all know it’s the only thing keeping Harry halfway upright.

“Liam,” Harry says, a heavy, heartfelt word. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Liam agrees, but his brows are drawn in, heavy. “H, I’m-”

Harry waves an exhausted hand. “Don't worry about it, Payno,” he mumbles. When Liam opens his mouth to protest, Harry shakes his head. “Seriously. I know you only doubted me because you were trying to protect the boys. I can't fault you for that.”

“Yes you can,” Liam says urgently. “I should've known better. You're one of my best friends, Haz. My brother.”

“S’all I wanted,” Harry says, raw and honest in the midst of a battlefield. Liam’s breath stutters, then he  scoops him into a hard, fierce hug.

Zayn’s there at Louis’ side, picking quickly at the ropes around Louis’ wrists, the both of them pretending they can't hear the muttered _love you, bro_ s and _glad you're in my life, man_ s coming from Liam and Harry, who are all awkward limbs and badly-hidden tears.

“Here,” Zayn says, rubbing some kind of thick salve over the aching burns on Louis’ wrists, aggravated into increasingly desperate levels of pain after the liberal amount of blessed ropes in Louis’ life over the past few days. He slips the tin into Louis’ pocket. “We've got things handled here. You two should go somewhere safe, somewhere no one will think to look for you. Relax for a while. _Heal_.”

“But,” Louis resists, “the fighting-”

“Will be over soon,” Zayn interrupts. “And is not your problem anymore.”

Louis looks up, for the first time, and actually takes in the sights of the battle around them. It isn't — like Caroline predicted — a bloodbath between angels and demons and their assorted allies. No, the only casualties seem to be the human cultists, trapped in a cage of their own making and unable to escape. Nearby, Perrie and Jade are holding the arms of a middle-aged man in the ever-present black robes as Nick gleefully rips into him. Jesy and Lottie are chasing another, tossing fireballs at her feet. Niall and Bressie are throwing spellbooks and blessed ropes and piles of sinister herbs onto the fire, which is now roaring (blessedly, wonderfully) a normal orange-red.

The crowd gathered here to kickstart the immortal war found itself allied together with a new target, and Louis, suddenly, has no doubt in his mind that this cult will be eliminated from the face of the earth before Louis’ rope burns even begin to heal. Angels and demons alike don't have to worry about each other, not when there are humans out in the world trying to hurt them and the beings they love.

Somehow, instead of igniting the pile of gunpowder that could've exploded them all into outright war, the cult brought them together.

There's a human saying about keeping friends close and enemies closer, and maybe this isn’t what they meant, but something about it fits all the same.

“Get some rest,” Zayn urges again. “We’ll get everything settled and reported.”

Liam, who had helped Harry to his shaky feet and walked him back to Louis, nods as he lets Harry slump against Louis’ side. “Go,” he agrees. “We can handle things here.”

Across the field, rife with pitiful screams and the red stain of human blood, Niall looks up like he's been listening in. He nods too, giving Louis a little salute, before he turns back to the fire, hard-eyed, and starts to extinguish it with nothing more than a steely look and a palm glowing with magic.

“Okay,” Louis rasps out. Maybe they've got a point; Louis doubts he could get to his feet, let alone swing his sword, so they'll be no use here. “We’ll find you when we can.”

“Take your time,” Liam reassures them, pulling his sword from Caroline’s body and unceremoniously wiping her own blood off the blade with her dress.

Louis wraps his hand around Harry's wrist, gathers his remaining energy around himself. A quick teleport, then he and Harry can sleep.

Sleep, heal, and celebrate still being alive, along with the rest of their little immortal family.

Somewhere safe, Zayn said.

Louis knows just the place.

 

* * *

 

_Kunduz, Afghanistan | May 2016_

Days pass strangely under the Afghanistan sky. Of course, that might have more to do with the slips in and out of consciousness than anything else, night and day as immaterial as fog in Louis’ head.

They’d appeared on the doorstep of the monastery barely standing, and when the door opened they’d fallen inside, an uncoordinated mess of limbs. There was a quiet curse in raspy Urdu, and a familiar voice calling for someone’s help.

Strong hands rolled Louis over, and he blinked tiredly up at a face he’d seen before, though it had been the face of a young man, then, barely more than a teenager.

“Yusuf,” Louis breathed out. He did it; he got them to safety. He could relax.  

Yusuf’s eyes widened, and a smile appeared under a salt-and-pepper beard. “Louis! And Harry, both of you! Our saviors, back for a visit.” His voice was warm, on the edge of playful. “And in such good shape.”

“You said,” Harry replied quietly, as another person helped him sit up, “if we ever needed a place to stay-”

Yusuf’s smile faded into something more serious. “You are always welcome here. Come, we’ll clear a room for you.”

That was… three days ago? Four? The stars were visible a few times through the open window, but Louis has no concept of how much time has passed, if those glimpses were all in the same night, or spread across multiple evenings. The rope burns around his wrists and ankles have healed, only a little tender now, and his magic has slowly replenished itself as he rests, but he’s still groggy and sore from the entire ordeal.

And so the days passed. A few times, Louis woke to quiet humming, Yusuf’s dark head bowed in meditation over Louis and Harry as they slept off their injuries. Sometimes Harry was awake, sipping slightly steaming tea, curled up comfortably as he played a round of [hokm](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GvDjoTzjwd6XLuMDxdmUMrUp2YQVoOT0nwpJ_fOOUeE/edit#bookmark=id.i7dcqsbi5ugx) with a sharp-eyed girl of about fourteen. Once, Louis woke to an inquisitive finger poking at his cheek, and he blinked to find the curious eyes of a toddler watching him for reactions. Yusuf had swept the child away to let Louis rest, but not before Louis flashed his eyes fire-red to make the boy giggle.

  
  
  


This is the first time Louis has woken and stayed awake more than a few minutes, and a couple of details filter through his sleep-muddled mind: Yusuf has put them in the room with the giant fresco of Louis and Harry on the wall, because he has a wicked sense of humor; it’s morning, or somewhere near it, and the sun is just starting to burn the morning mist out of the air; and, lastly, Louis is alone, and the cushions Harry had been laying on last time Louis was briefly awake are cool to the touch, so he’s been up for a while.

“You must be hungry,” Yusuf says from the doorway, startling Louis out of his thoughts. Louis nods, getting to his feet — he’s not actually hungry at all, but he wants to walk around, maybe check in with the boys, find a spot of water to rinse off the grime of days-old battle.

A dish of qabli palaw is pushed into Louis’ hands by a tiny girl who can only be seven or eight, and who grins toothily at Louis when he thanks her. Louis follows Yusuf out to the ancient courtyard, where Harry is entertaining a small group of children with what probably sounds to them like a wild tale of impossible adventure.

“I see the orphanage is still going strong,” Louis says, scooping up a bite of rice and a sliced carrot.

“As long as there are people who need it, the orphanage will always be here,” Yusuf says. “But, to your point, yes, we are doing well. The place has become a bit of a landmark — apparently, no one who lives here can get get sick, and the water is always fresh, even in droughts.” His eyes glitter with good humor, and he takes a bite for himself. “We had to send away an entire family who had a perfectly good home of their own and an apparently terrible communal case of the common cold.”

“Not very charitable of you,” Louis sniffs, and chuckles when Yusuf shoves light-heartedly at his shoulder.

Harry looks up at the sound of Louis’ laugh, and their eyes meet, lock, hold; it hasn’t escaped Louis’ notice that it’s been four days since their most recent escape from death, and he hasn’t been able to do more than press a single, desperately relieved kiss to Harry’s forehead before they both tumbled into sleep days ago.

They’ve had close calls before, but this was the closest.

But — _but._ But there Harry is. _Alive,_ alive and whole and _himself,_ which wasn’t a worry Louis had before Caroline showed him the error of his ways, taught him a new kind of terror he never knew to fear. And yet they not only survived; they _won,_ they won, and they’re okay.

Yusuf is saying something, but Louis’ attention is elsewhere. He mutters a distracted, “Hmm?” without ever looking from Harry’s bright, beautiful face.

“Ah,” Yusuf says knowingly, and Louis doesn’t even bother blushing at the knowing tone. The bowl of qabli palaw is taken from his hands, and there’s another gentle shove to his shoulder. “Go on, I’ll make sure the children don’t follow you.”

Yusuf is wonderful.

“When we get back,” Louis promises, though his eyes stay glued to Harry’s as he stands, “we’ll make you an entire monastery out of diamonds.”

Yusuf laughs. “Seems impractical. Go, enjoy being alive.”

And that’s what they do.

There’s a plateau behind the monastery with a view of the entire sky, and it doesn’t matter that their eyes won’t be open most of the time, because between kisses and touches they can still appreciate the view.

Harry kisses Louis breathless, kisses him timeless, kisses him until the sun starts to fall out of the sky. Louis shouts until he thinks even the stars are shaking, or maybe that’s just him and the shiver Harry chases up his spine. Harry snaps his fingers and a blanket appears, and he takes Louis apart under the wide night sky; Louis rolls them over once they’ve caught their breath, and he returns the favor.

It’s slow, it’s fast; it’s loud, it’s quiet. It’s a month of love packed into a single night. It’s _we made it_ and _we’re okay_ and it’s _I love you I love you I love you._

There was a dramatic ending to a dangerous chapter, and there was even a battle that, Louis knows, they won, but this is the closure they needed to know it was _really_ over. _This_ is what was missing; this is the shaky-handed, desperation-laced part of the story they never got to have.

They’re finally getting to celebrate being alive with teeth and skin and gasps.

“I get to keep you,” Louis realizes. His voice is hoarse, his heart is full. “I get to keep you forever.”

“We get to have forever,” Harry agrees. Sweaty slick skin slides together; Harry’s eyes are green under the light of a heavy full moon.

This is it.

They get to have forever.  


 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

_Dublin, Ireland | June 2016_

“A toast,” Niall calls, and glasses all around the table are lifted into the air.

“To new friends,” suggests Liam, who is grinning at Sophia, a kitsune he met a few weeks ago and who he, somehow, convinced to come to family dinner.

“And to old,” Harry adds, tilting his own glass towards Nick, who still looks mildly uncomfortable amongst all the angels in the room, but who knows better by now than to think anything could happen to him. Pixie and Alexa are with him, eyes flickering black every once in a while when they’re startled, but they, too, have settled in well. They’ve even brought a newbie with them, a heavy-lidded girl named Dua who looks apprehensive but entertained, tucked between Harry and Zayn on the long bench next to the table.

“To family,” Louis says, and there’s a chorus of _hear, hear_ around the table.

“I’ll drink to that, aye,” Niall says, and they follow his lead, draining their glasses of champagne laced with single drops of faerie liquor. “Now. Where’s the food?” he calls to the kitchen.

“Keep your trousers on,” Bressie grumbles good-naturedly, carrying a massive roast ham out of the kitchen. His oven mitts are neon pink, and his tongue sticks out a little as he settles the dish in the center of the table. Louis would like to say it’s the least intimidating that he’s ever seen Bressie, but he’d be lying; last week, the demigod _pouted_ when he went bankrupt in Monopoly.

“Nah,” Niall laughs, curling an arm around Bressie’s hip as he straightens up, tucking the oven mitts into his back pockets. “Rather take them off, actually.” He grins cheekily and rises up on his tiptoes to kiss Bressie’s suddenly-pink cheek.

“No,” Ed jeers, throwing a slice of apple at them. “Not in public.”

“Louis and Harry have been sappy for _centuries,_ I am _allowed_ to have a few months,” Niall says, tossing the apple back at Ed.

“We weren’t that bad,” Harry disagrees.

Even Dua scoffs at that, and she’s known Harry and Louis for an entire two hours now.

Though, to be fair, Louis is currently tucked under Harry’s arm, and has been letting Harry steal sips of his drink all night.

_Still._

“Ah, let them flirt,” Louis says, shaking his head fondly at Bressie and Niall, who’ve lost the thread of the conversation entirely as they tease each other all the way back into the kitchen. “It’s been a long time coming.”

“Ed’s just jealous because he’s not getting any,” Zayn grins. There’s an _oooh_ around the table, and Zayn has to throw up a quick ward to block the second slice of apple Ed hurls across the table.

“Am too!” he protests.

“Children,” Harry warns, but he’s smiling so hard he’s dimpling.

“If you’re actually going to claim it, you’re going to have to offer up some receipts,” Liam tells Ed knowledgeably. He leans over to Sophia and nudges her with his elbow, as if to say _I might be a sixty-year-old undead angel, but I’m still hip with the kids._

Sophia, luckily, looks indulgently impressed instead of rolling her eyes, as Louis has done.

“Yeah, I’m calling bullshit,” Nick adds, and grins wolfishly when Ed makes an affronted noise.

The doorbell rings, and Lottie — the one sitting closest to the door — leaves to answer it, waving Niall back into the kitchen when he appears. Ed is still pleading his case.

“Look, I’m a gentleman-”

“Uh, no,” Eoghan laughs.  

“-and I’m not going to name names-”

“Because there aren’t any,” Harry sing-songs.

“-but let’s just say the possibility of a universe-ending angel and demon war makes people do crazy things.”

Louis snorts so loud his nose hurts, and he’s not the only one. Jade and Jesy, who Ed is currently waggling his eyebrows at and who were with him when the summons was sent out for backup in Elis, both look unimpressed.

“Oh, Edward,” Jade says, flipping a curl over her shoulder. “Not in this afterlife.”

“Wasn’t talking about you, darling,” Ed grins.

They all turn to Jesy, expecting the denial, but they don't get one and the room explodes in hooting and howling. Ed is buried under congratulatory smacks on the back and Leigh-Anne leaning over to ruffle his hair and Liam reaching over to punch his shoulder, cackling. Jesy doesn’t even go pink, just raises an eyebrow.

“And with that, you lost your chance for round two,” she smirks.

“I believe you mean round four,” Ed says, disarmingly charming, and even Jesy cracks her own grin as the audience melts into pandemonium again.

“Lou,” Lottie calls from the doorway over the noise. “Where should we seat our guests?”

Louis looks up, still laughing, but nearly falls off his seat when he sees who stands in the doorway behind Lottie, looking wildly uncomfortable in jeans and t-shirts.

“Gabriel?” Louis asks. “Jophiel?”

The two seraphim look wildly uncomfortable as the roar dies down, all eyes turned on them now. Gabe still looks like a surfer who got lost on the way to Cali, like maybe his VW bus broke down and he just wandered his way here, and Joph is quiet and imposing, tall and broad and intimidating in the doorway.

“Is something wrong?” Louis asks, getting to his feet. “Is everyone okay?”

“No, baby bro, nothing’s wrong,” Gabriel says, shoving his hands into his pockets. He’s wearing distressed jeans, because of course he is. “Just-” he shrugs, “just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

It’s not an olive branch, it’s an entire fucking olive tree; this is the closest the Seven get to apologizing. Gabe shuffles nervously, waiting for Louis’ reply. Joph looks calm as always, but Louis knows to look for the tightening around his eyes, the stillness of his stance.

“Well,” Louis says slowly, and Gabe actually braces as if for a blow. “If you wanted a fuss, you came to the right place.”

Niall laughs from the doorway, holding another bottle of faerie liquor and an overflowing basket of bread. His hair is mussed and his cheeks are brilliant red, and Bressie follows him out looking like he’s been through a very affectionate hurricane. “Hell yeah,” Niall agrees cheerfully. “Come on, there’s plenty of room.”

And just like that, family dinner includes two more.

It’s awkward in some parts; Gabe asks Nick to pass the potatoes and freezes when their hands brush, and Nick raises a cool eyebrow as if to say, _will this be a problem?_ It’s quickly diverted, but then Jophiel spends a couple of minutes staring at Sophia before asking “What are you,” and things have to be soothed over once more.

The ice does break eventually, though, because this family has always been good at filing down the edges of newcomers, letting them slide smoothly into a place where they’re comfortable amongst the chaos. Daisy and Phoebe sit on either side of Jophiel and ask him question after question, each of which he answers only after a moment of serious contemplation.

“Have you been to the sun?”

“Yes, once.”

“Did you like it there?”

“Not particularly.”

“Why are you so tall?”

“I was created this way.”

“Is it to make you seem scary?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like our brother?”

Louis flicks his glance that way at that one, though he’s grateful the conversation continues to flow elsewhere at the table. Jophiel is frowning a little, like he’s truly considering his answer.

“Your brother is brave, and loyal, and will do anything to protect those he loves,” Joph finally says. “That is admirable.”

Daisy and Phoebe exchange a look and then, in unison, nod. “Good,” says Daisy. “You can stay.”

Louis hides his laugh in his glass, but later he pulls his youngest sisters off to the side to cuddle them close, glad they share a fierce protective streak if nothing else.

Gabriel, meanwhile, gravitates back to Nick after the meal is over, looking cautious but optimistic. Louis doesn’t eavesdrop — even if he’s _dying_ to know what they’re talking about — but he doesn’t need to hear their conversation to see the way Gabe’s trademark smile slowly appears, to hear a helpless laugh pulled out of Nick, seemingly against Nick’s will.

“Huh,” Harry says, propping his chin on Louis’ shoulder. “Who’d’ve thought.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Louis smiles, turning in Harry’s arms. No one is watching him; they aren’t the most interesting part of the room anymore. Nick and Gabriel are leaning close like they’re conspiring, sunny blond and rakishly disheveled brunet heads bent close. Bressie and Niall are dancing, Niall’s old record player spinning something soft and sweet, Bressie’s smile helpless where it’s pressed in Niall’s hair. Lottie is painting Joph’s nails bright gold to match the sigil on his forehead, the band that sparkles like a crown. Dua, Eoghan, and Ed are deep in conversation, something about guitar strings and tensile strength, and Fizzy and Leigh-Anne are shouting gibberish at the TV, the channel on some ridiculous singing competition. “It’s not so strange, this.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Harry says. His eyes are bright and happy; it’s all Louis ever wanted.

  
  
  


 

When they leave Niall’s tonight they’ll go home, and they’ll go to bed, and they’ll find each other again tangled in their sheets; another wedding night in a long line. They’ll lie together, sleepy-giddy and _content,_ and gossip about Nick and Gabe, and about whether Liam will convince Sophia he’s not a massive dork, or at least he’s a massive dork worth taking a chance on, and whether Niall and Bressie are actually going to drag all of them out to Dún Aonghasa for an official binding ceremony, tying the two of them together under the eyes of an Irish moon and all their family and friends.

They’ll kiss because they want to, trace the scars and burns and marks that litter their bodies, and remember each little spot as a memory, as a wound that has healed and a story they can tell.

They’ll sleep, restful and deep and untroubled.

And then they’ll wake, sweaty and warm, and maybe Harry will ask, “Where should we go today, Lou?” and Louis will answer, “Anywhere you want, love,” because this is their forever.

Their forever is only just beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you x 10000000 to the wonderful amazing [rachel](http://mercurialsirius.tumblr.com/) for betaing this for me, and to the dynamic trio of sara, ellie, and amanda for being there when i just needed somewhere to yell for a bit, i love you all. 
> 
> the title for this fic and the snippets at the beginning of each chapter are all from [saying your names by richard siken](http://youngerpoets.yupnet.org/2008/04/17/saying-your-names-crush-by-richard-siken-2004-winner/). 
> 
> if you feel like being amazing/stupendous/my personal hero, you can reblog the post for this fic [here on tumblr](http://alivingfire.tumblr.com/post/160087318876). 
> 
> i would be totally remiss if i didn't link the other angel and demon-related AUs that were so good they made me itch to write my own:  
> • [the johnlock one - I Used To Live Alone Before I Knew You](http://archiveofourown.org/works/147622)  
> • [the other johnlock one - The Stars Move Still](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578307)  
> • [the other _other_ johnlock one - Capital H-i-m](http://archiveofourown.org/works/292610)  
>  • [the sterek one - Hell Is Other People](http://archiveofourown.org/series/27856)  
> • [the stevebucky one - Crossroads](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3395759)  
> • [the larry one - have mercy, if you please](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2447594)  
> • and, of course [_The_ larry one - Run Like the Devil](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6625750)
> 
> thank you again to everyone who asked for updates on this story, who cheered me on, and who were so wonderful as i was crawling my way through the process of this fic. i love you all more than you know! 
> 
> i'm [here](http://alivingfire.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if you'd like to chat. or! if there are parts of the story i _didn't_ link any extra research/information for but you're interested in what i found, let me know! i'm happy to add on to the notes.
> 
>  **EDIT 1/8/18:** ICYMI, this fic is now a book, and honestly... i'm still not over it. thank you a million times over to everyone who has made it this far. you can purchase the printed copy with bonus scenes and fanart [here](http://www.lulu.com/shop/alivingfire/say-hallelujah-say-goodnight/paperback/product-23474262.html).


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